In this room there are always millions at stake. So firmly established is the reputation of this institution, that there is hardly ever a barque sailing from the ports of the Baltic, or the French, Spanish, or Indian seas which is not insured at Lloyd’s. Its branch establishments are in all the commercial ports of the world; but its head-office is in Cornhill, and in the rooms of the Exchange. Before we again descend the stairs, let us for one moment enter the reading-room. Perfect silence; tables, chairs, desks; readers here and there; men of all countries and of all nations; all round the walls, high desks with files of newspapers, whose shape and colour indicate that they have not been printed in Europe; they are, indeed, papers from the other side of the ocean—China, Barbary, Brazilian, Australian, Cape, and Honolulu papers—a collection unrivalled in extent, though less orderly than the collections of the Trieste Lloyd’s and the Hamburg Börsen-halle. It is here that the stranger from the German continent first receives an adequate idea of the enormous extent of commercial journalism. How far different is this reading-room from anything we see at home? How extensive must be the communications of a nation to which such journals are a necessity! How small does German commerce look in comparison with this! When we were at school, we were told that commerce was a means of communication between the various parts of the world; that merchants are the messengers of progressive civilisation; and that to be a good merchant a man ought to be well read in geography, history, politics, and a great many other sciences. And then we saw our neighbour, the grocer and tallow-chandler, weighing and making up sugar in paper parcels all the year round. He knew nothing whatever of geography, history, or politics; but for all that, he was a wealthy man and a great person in the town, and everybody said he was the pattern of a good merchant. We could not understand this. At a later period, when we lived in a German metropolis, we saw other great merchants, bankers, and manufacturers. They did not make up paper parcels as the grocer and tallow-chandler did; they were dressed with a certain elegance; they read newspapers, and were fond of discussing the events of the day. But many of them had not the least idea of the politics which they discussed, and on which they founded their speculations; they had forgotten whatever they had learnt of geography, commercial topography, and history; and nevertheless they passed as capital men of business and accomplished merchants. Our romantic ideas of the requirements, the influences, and the radiations of the commerce of the world received again a rude shock; but now, suddenly, as accident leads us into Lloyd’s reading-room, the old impressions come back again. Thus, after all, the lessons of our school-days were not untrue! These, then, are the messengers of commerce which promote the exchange of civilisation between the continents and islands of the world. Neither sciences nor religions are powerful enough to found those organs. They owe their existence solely to commerce: possibly they may be means to an end; but it is also an undoubted fact that they exert a vast influence on the peaceful progress of civilisation.
Of the 50,000,000 lbs. of tea which are sold in the east of London, a handful has found its way to the West, to Guildford-street. It lies in the bottom of the venerable silver family tea-pot; and this tea-pot stands on the table of the parlour, to which the reader has been introduced on former occasions. The mistress of the house is passing in review her two lines of cups and saucers, headed by the milk-jug and sugar-basin. Mrs. Bella reads Punch, and smiles, not at the jokes, but because she is happy that English liberty admits of such jokes. The two younger daughters of the house occupy one chair between them, where they read “David Copperfield,” and two very small grandchildren of Sir John perform a polka in the further corner of the room. Sir John himself, as usual, is reading the Times, and just now he wags his head very impressively, because he has been reading Gladstone’s letter about the affairs of Naples. Sir John, though perfectly convinced of Dr. Keif’s honesty and good faith, has never at any time given full credit to his statements when that gentleman presumed to hint that the administration of criminal justice in Italy is not altogether so unexceptionable as that at the Old Bailey. But now, since Mr. Gladstone corroborates Dr. Keif’s statement in that respect—Mr. Gladstone, who is a native of England, a very respectable man, and a conservative to his nethermost coating of flannel—now indeed Sir John is of opinion that the Neapolitans have, after all, good cause for complaint.
We have returned from our excursion into the city, and reenter the comfortable parlour, shake hands all round, and sit down by the tea-table. Sir John has smuggled the Times under his chair, lest the Doctor should at once have a weapon to attack him with. He asks where we have been; and when we tell him, he leans his head back, purses up his mouth, shuts his eyes, and says “Well?” This “Well” of Sir John’s, accompanied by that peculiar movement of the head, means, if translated into common language, “Well, what do you say to London? Mere nothing, isn’t it?—A business in Mincing-lane, a mere trifle?—merely a piece of Leipsic or Frankfort—never mind—patience—you’ll see what London is. You’ll open your eyes by and bye! Only think what enormous sums are turned over at Lloyd’s every year!”
Sir John is altogether victorious to-day. We cannot meet him on this ground. In vain does Dr. Keif attempt to demonstrate that there is no reason why Germany should not become as wealthy and mighty as England, if she had only a little more union, a little less government, an idea or so more of a fleet, fewer custom-houses, a little more money and less soldiery. Sir John admits every one of Dr. Keif’s propositions; but his 30,000,000 lbs. of coffee, and his 50,000,000 lbs. of tea, and his 20,000,000 lbs. of tobacco, are great facts, and stubborn facts, against which nothing can be said. Germany may be better off a couple of hundred years hence. Of course it may, there is no reason why it should not; but it is very badly off now, and that is a fact, too. And Sir John launches forth into a long and elaborate lecture on insurance companies, premiums, percentages, capital, bonuses, and dividends, intermixed with certain allusions to the impractical and improvident habits of the Germans, and the uselessness generally of all the German professors. The last word, pronounced with a certain emphasis, rouses Dr. Keif from the sleep into which Sir John’s statistical and economical expositions had lulled him.
“Long life to all our German professors!” said Dr. Keif, rubbing his eyes. “50,000,000 lbs. of tea in Mincing-lane, and not a drop in my cup. Where’s the greatness of England, Sir John?—Good night.”
CHAP. X.
Hyde Park.
PILGRIMAGE TO THE FAR WEST.—OXFORD-STREET.—HYDE-PARK IN THE SEASON.—ROTTEN ROW.—THE DUKE AND THE QUEEN.—THE FRONT OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.—DR. KEIF ENTERS, MAKES A SPEECH ON BRITISH LOYALTY, AND EXIT.—THE IRON SHUTTERS OF APSLEY-HOUSE.—THE BRITISH GENERAL AND THE RIOTERS.
HITHERTO our excursions have been confined to the east; but now we propose leaving Russell and Bedford Squares and the British Museum to the right, and Covent-garden and all its theatres to the left, to direct our pilgrimage through Oxford-street to the West. Oxford-street holds the medium between the city streets and the West-end streets. Its public is mixed; goods, waggons, and private carriages, omnibuses, and men and women on horseback, men of business, fashionable loungers, and curious strangers, are mixed up; shops of all sorts, from the most elegant drapers’ shops down to the lowest oyster-stall, may be found in it; and there are, moreover, legions of costermongers, and shoals of advertising vans. Oxford-street is long and broad enough to take in the population of a small town. It changes its character several times, according to the greater or less elegance of the quarter through which it runs. After we have walked a good half-hour in a straight line, and in the present instance we have walked very fast, looking neither to the right nor to the left, we reach a part where the row of houses on the left side terminates, and Hyde Park commences. Here there is a high arch of white marble, which every body admires, and a small stone, which no one notices, because it stands near the pump from which the cabmen fetch water for their horses; an inscription on this stone tells us, that here is the site of the famous Tyburn Turnpike. The arch, a curtailed imitation of the triumphal arch of Constantine, cost George IV. £60,000, and stood in front of Buckingham-palace. A few months ago, it was removed to Hyde Park, where it now stands in all its marble glory. Does it perform the functions of a gate? No! because there is no wall. Is it a triumphal-arch? Perhaps so, to commemorate the bad taste of its founder. At all events, it promotes the interests of unity, for on the opposite side of Hyde Park there has been these many years past a similar gate, which opens a way through nothing, and there is a triumphal arch in the face of it, which trumpets forth the good taste of Punch, whose paternal exhortations could not prevent the Duke of Wellington from being placed on that perilous height.
The English are in many respects like our own good honest peasants. So long as the latter keep to their ploughs, they are most amiable and respectable; but if you find them in town, and induce them to put on fashionable clothes, you may rely on it that thus affected they will give you plenty of kicks. Let an Englishman make a park, and his production will be admirable; but if you wish for an entrance into a park, you had better not apply to him. Fortunately Hyde Park is much larger than its two splendid portals. There is plenty of room to lose them from your sight; and there are a great many agreeable scenes which will banish them from your memory. Passing through the Marble-arch to those regions where the Exhibition building stands, we cross a meadow large enough to induce us to believe that we are far away from London. In the west, the ground rises in gentle hills with picturesque groups of trees on their summits and in the valleys; here and there an old tufted oak, with its gnarled branches boldly stretched out; the grass is fresh and green, though all the passengers walk on it. It is green up to the very trunks of the trees, whose shade is generally injurious to vegetation; it is green throughout the winter and through the summer months, though there is not a drop of rain for many weeks, for the mild and moist atmosphere nourishes it and favours the growth of ivy which clusters round any tree too old to resist its approaches. Thus does Hyde Park extend far to the west and the south, until it finds its limits in bricks and mortar. A slight blue mist hangs on the distant trees; and through the mist down in the south there are church towers looming in the far distance like the battlements of turretted castles in the midst of romantic forests. The trees recede; a small lake comes in view, it is an artificial extension of the Serpentine, which has the honor of seeing the elegance of London riding and driving on its banks. Early in the morning the lake is plebeian. The children of the neighbourhood swim their boats on it; apprentices on their way to work make desperate casts for some half-starved gudgeon; the ducks come forward in dirty morning wrappers. Nursery-maids with babies innumerable take walks by order; and at a very early hour a great many plebeians have the impertinence to bathe in the little lake. But to-day the park and the river are in true aristocratic splendour; here and there, there is indeed some stray nursery-maid walking on the grass, and some little tub of a boat with a ragged sail floating on the lake; there is also a group of anglers demonstrating to one another with great patience that the fish wont bite to-day, but all along the banks of the river far down to the end of the park and up to the majestic shades of Kensington gardens there is an interminable throng of horses and carriages. Those who have seen the Prater of Vienna in the first weeks of May will be rather disappointed with the aspect of the drive in Hyde Park, where the upper classes of London congregate in the evening between five and seven o’clock, partly to take the air, and partly because it is considered fashionable to see now and then in order to be seen. Extravagant turn-outs and liveries, such as the Viennese produce with great ostentation, are not to be found in London. The English aristocracy like to make an impression by the simplicity and solidity of their appearance; and the metropolis is the last of all places where they would wish to excite attention by a dashing and extravagant exterior. They have not the least desire either to dazzle or to awe the tradespeople or to make them envious. They are too sure of their position to be tempted to advertise it: whoever wants this assurance cannot pretend to belong to the aristocracy. By far more interesting, and indeed unrivalled, is Rotten-row, the long broad road for horsemen, where, on fine summer evenings, all the youth, beauty, celebrity, and wealth of London may be seen on horse-back.
Hundreds of equestrians, ladies and gentlemen, gallop to and fro. How fresh and rosy these English girls are! How firmly they sit! What splendid forms and expressive features! Free, fresh, bold, and natural. The blue veil flutters, and so does the riding-habit; a word to the horse and movement of the bridle, and they gallop on, nodding to friends to the right and left, the happiness of youth expressed in face and form, and no idea, no thought, for the thousand sorrows of this earth. A man of a harmless and merry mind may pass a happy summer’s evening in looking at this the most splendid of all female cavalcades; but he who has become conscious of those all-pervading sufferings of humanity which, felt through thousands of years, denied through thousands of years, and asserted only within the last few years by the millions of our earth—he who has pressed this thorny knowledge of the world to his heart, let him avoid this spot of happiness-breathing splendour, lest the thorns wound him more severely still. Then comes an old man, with his horse walking at a slow pace, his low hat pushed back that the white hair on his temples may have the benefit of the breeze. His head bent forward, the bridle dangling in a hand weak with age, the splendour of the eyes half-dimmed, his cheeks sunken, wrinkles round his mouth and on his forehead, his aquiline nose bony and protruding; who does not know him? His horse walks gently on the sand; every one takes off his hat; the young horse-women get out of his way; and the Duke smiles to the right and to the left. Few persons can boast of so happy a youth as this old man’s age. He turns round the corner; the long broad row becomes still more crowded; large groups of ten or twenty move up and down; fast riding is quite out of the question, when all of a sudden a couple come forward at a quick pace. There is room for them and their horses in the midst of Rotten-row, however full it may be, for every one is eager to make way for them: it is the Queen and her husband, without martial pomp and splendour, without a single naked sword within sight. The crowd closes in behind her; the young women appear excited; the old men smile with great glee at seeing their Queen in such good health. Dandies in marvellous trowsers, incredible waistcoats, and stunning ties, put up their glasses; the anglers on the lake crowd to one side in order to see the Queen; the nurserymaids, the babies, and the boys with their hoops come up to the railings; the grass plots, where just now large groups of people sat chatting, are left vacant, and the shades of the evening are over the park. The sun is going down behind the trees; its parting rays rest on the Crystal Palace with a purple and golden glare, whose reflection falls on Rotten-row and its horsemen.