Saunterings in and about London

by Max Schlesinger

St. James’s-street connects Piccadilly with Pall-mall. We are still in the quarters of splendour, and we are approaching the land of clubs and royalty. In the beginning of the 18th century there were a great many theatres in and around St. James’s. In the chronicles of those old theatres, there is a deal of matter for the student of the life and character of old London. The managers were speculators; the public were credulous; there was a strong hankering after miracles, and a decided predilection for noise. On the whole, people in those days were much the same as they are now, but there was more coarseness, more massiveness, and less grace. We go down St. James’ Street, and reach the point where it joins Pall Mall; there we stand, in front of St. James’ Palace, an old, black, and rambling building, with no interest, except what it derives from the past; and even in the past, it was considered as a mere appendage to Whitehall; and only after Whitehall was burned down, did St. James’ Palace become the real seat of royalty; and it continued to be so until George IV. took up his residence at Buckingham Palace. At the present day, the old palace is used for court ceremonies only; the Queen holds her levees and drawing-rooms in it. In the three large saloons there are, on such occasions, crowds of people who have the entrée, in full dress, and great splendour, thronging round the throne, which is ornamented with a canopy of red velvet, and a gold star and crown. The walls are decorated with pictures of the battles of Waterloo and Vittoria; in the back-ground are the Queen’s apartments, where she receives her ministers. The anti-chambers are filled with yeomen of the guard, and court officials of every description. In the court-yard are the state-carriages of the nobility; and the streets around the park are thronged with crowds of anxious spectators.

These are the moments when that gloomy building is lighted up with the splendour of modern royalty; at all other times, night and day, red grenadiers pace to and fro in front of the dark walls. The court-yards are given up to the gambols of birds, cats, and children; but every morning, a military band of music plays in the colour court.

Pall Mall is one of the most splendid streets in London; its splendour is chiefly owing to the club houses. There are, in this street, the Oxford and Cambridge Club, the Army and Navy Club, the Carlton, the Reform, the Travellers’, and the Athenæum. Besides these, there are in London a large number of club-houses, of which it may generally be said, that their chief end and aim is to procure a comfortable home by means of association, in as cheap and perfect a manner as possible.

But the words, “as cheap and perfect as possible,” convey quite a different idea to the German to what they do to the Englishman. A short explanation may not, perhaps, be out of place at this point.

A younger son of an old house, with an income of, say from two to four hundred pounds, cannot live, and do as others do, within the limits of that income. He can neither take and furnish a house, nor can he keep a retinue of servants or give dinners to his friends. The club is his home, and stands him in the place of an establishment. At the club, spacious and splendidly furnished saloons are at his disposal; there is a library, a reading-room, baths, and dressing-rooms. At the club he finds all the last new works and periodicals; a crowd of servants attend upon him; and the cooking is irreproachable. The expenses of the establishment are defrayed by the annual contributions and the entrance fees. But, of course, neither the annual contributions nor the entrance-fees, pay for the dinners and suppers, the wines and cigars, of the members. Members do dine at the clubs: indeed, the providing of dinners is among the leading objects of these establishments, and the dinners are good and cheap, compared to the extortionate prices of the London hotels. The club provides everything, and gives it at cost price; a member of a good club pays five shillings for a dinner, which in an hotel would be charged, at least, four times that sum.

The habitués of the London Clubs would be shocked if they were asked to pass their hours and half-hours in our German coffee and reading-rooms; and, on the other hand, persons accustomed to the bee-hive life of Vienna coffee-houses consider the London Clubs as dull though handsome edifices. Lordly halls, splendid carpets, sofas, arm-chairs, strong, soft, and roomy, in which a man might dream away his life; writing and reading-rooms tranquil enough to suit a poet, and yet grand, imposing, aristocratic; doors covered with cloth to prevent the noise of their opening and shutting, and their brass handles resplendent as the purest gold; enormous fire-places surrounded by slabs of the whitest marble; the furniture of mahogany and palisander; the staircases broad and imposing as in the palazzos of Rome; the kitchens chefs d’oeuvre of modern architecture; bath and dressing-rooms got up with all the requirements of modern luxury; in short, the whole house full of comfortable splendour and substantial wealth. All this astonishes but does not dazzle one, because here prevails that grand substantial taste in domestic arrangements and furniture, in which the English surpass all other nations, and which it is most difficult to imitate, because it is most expensive.

The influence which club-life exercises on the character of Englishmen is still an open question among them. The majority of the fairer portion of Her Majesty’s subjects hate and detest the clubs most cordially. Mrs. Grundy is loud in her complaints, that all that lounging, gossiping, and smoking deprives those “brutes of men” of the delight they would otherwise take in her intellectual society, and that club dinners make men such epicures, they actually turn up their noses at cold mutton. And even when at home, Mr. Grundy is always dull, and goes about sulking with Mrs. Grundy. To be sure, all he wants is to pick a quarrel, and go and spend his evening in that “horrid club.” But there are some women who presume to differ from the views of this admirable type of old English matrons. They are fond of clubs, and hold a man all the more fitted for the fetters of matrimony after yawning away a couple of years in one of these British monasteries. The club-men, say these ladies, make capital husbands; for the regulations of the club-houses admit of no domestic vices, and these regulations are enforced with such severity, that a woman’s rule appears gentle ever afterwards.

The windows of almost all the club-houses in Pall Mall have the most charming views on St. James’s Park. It is the smallest of all the parks; but it is a perfect jewel amidst the splendid buildings which surround it on all sides. On its glassy lake fine shrubs, and beeches, and ash-trees on the banks throw their trembling shadows; tame water-fowl of every description swim on it or waddle on the green sward near, and eat the crumbs which the children have brought for them. The paths are skirted with flower-beds, with luxurious grass-plots behind them; and on sunny days these grass-plots are crowded with happy children, who prefer this park to all others, for the water-birds are such grateful guests, and look so amiable and stupid, and are so fond of biscuits, and never bite any one. And the sheep, too, are altogether different from all other sheep in the world; they are so tame and fat, and never think of running away when a good child pats their backs, and gives them some bread to eat. And there are green boats, and for one penny they take you over to the other side; and the water, too, is green, much greener than the boat; and there is no danger of horses and carriages, and children may run and jump about without let or hindrance, and there are such numbers of children too. In short, there is no saying how much pleasure the London children take in St. James’s Park.

On the Continent, too, there are parks; they are larger, and are taken more care of, and by far more ornamental than the London parks. But all strangers who come to London must find that their imperial and royal palace gardens at home, with all their waterworks, and Chinese pagodas, Greek temples, and artificial romanticisms, do not make anything like that cheerful, refreshing, tranquillising, and yet exciting impression which the parks of England produce. It is certainly not the climate which works this miracle, nor is it a peculiarity of the soil, for fine meadow-land there is in plenty on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube. The English alone know how to handle Nature, so that it remains nature; they alone can here and there take off a tree, and in another place add some shrubs, without, therefore, forcing vegetation into the narrow sphere of arbitrary and artificial laws. Our great gardens at home want wide open grassplots; where such are, the shrubs and plantations encroach upon them; none are allowed to leave the paths and walk over the grass, and the public are confined to, and crowded on, the sand-covered paths, whence they may look at the clumps of trees, and the narrow empty clearances between them. On such spots in England you find the most splendid cattle; children are playing there, and men and women come and go, giving life, movement, and colouring to the landscape; and, since parks are but imitations of nature, life, movement, and colour are absolutely necessary to them.

This life on the green sward in the very heart of the metropolis gives the parks a rural and idyllic aspect; while, on the other hand, it suggested the saying, that all England gives one the idea of a large park.