But mostly I have separate, vivid pictures of London—individual things that I saw, idle, pointless things that I did, which cheer and amuse and please me even now whenever I think of them. Thus I recall venturing one noon into one of the Lyons restaurants just above Regent Street in Piccadilly and being struck with the size and importance of it even though it was intensely middle class. It was a great chamber, decorated after the fashion of a palace ball-room, with immense chandeliers of prismed glass hanging from the ceiling, and a balcony furnished in cream and gold where other tables were set, and where a large stringed orchestra played continuously during lunch and dinner. An enormous crowd of very commonplace people were there—clerks, minor officials, clergymen, small shop-keepers—and the bill of fare was composed of many homely dishes such as beef-and-kidney pie, suet pudding, and the like—combined with others bearing high-sounding French names. I mention this Lyons restaurant because there were several quite like it, and because it catered to an element not reached in quite the same way in America. In spite of the lifted eyebrows with which Barfleur greeted my announcement that I had been there, the food was excellent; and the service, while a little slow for a place of popular patronage, was good. I recall being amused by the tall, thin, solemn English head-waiters in frock coats, leading the exceedingly bourgeois customers to their tables. The English curate with his shovel hat was here in evidence and the minor clerk. I found great pleasure in studying this world, listening to the music, and thinking of the vast ramifications of London which it represented; for every institution of this kind represents a perfect world of people.
Another afternoon I went to the new Roman Catholic Cathedral in Westminster to hear a fourteenth-century chant which was given between two and three by a company of monks who were attached to the church. In the foggy London atmosphere a church of this size takes on great gloom, and the sound of these voices rolling about in it was very impressive. Religion seems of so little avail these days, however, that I wondered why money should be invested in any such structure or liturgy. Or why able-bodied, evidently material-minded men should concern themselves with any such procedure. There were scarcely a half-dozen people present, if so many; and yet this vast edifice echoes every day at this hour with these voices—a company of twenty or thirty fat monks who seemingly might be engaged in something better. Of religion—the spirit as opposed to the form—one might well guess that there was little.
From the cathedral I took a taxi, and bustling down Victoria Street, past the Houses of Parliament and into the Strand, came eventually to St. Paul’s. Although it was only four o’clock, this huge structure was growing dusky, and the tombs of Wellington and Marlborough were already dim. The organist allowed me to sit in the choir stalls with the choristers—a company of boys who entered, after a time, headed by deacons and sub-deacons and possibly a canon. A solitary circle of electric bulbs flamed gloomily overhead. By the light of this we were able to make out the liturgy covering this service—the psalms and prayers which swept sonorously through the building. As in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, I was impressed with the darkness and space and also, though not so much for some reason (temperamental inclination perhaps), with the futility of the procedure. There are some eight million people in London, but there were only twenty-five or thirty here, and I was told that this service was never much more popular. On occasions the church is full enough—full to overflowing—but not at this time of day. The best that I could say for it was that it had a lovely, artistic import which ought to be encouraged; and no doubt it is so viewed by those in authority. As a spectacle seen from the Thames or other sections of the city, the dome of St. Paul’s is impressive, and as an example of English architecture it is dignified—though in my judgment not to be compared with either Canterbury or Salisbury. But the interesting company of noble dead, the fact that the public now looks upon it as a national mausoleum and that it is a monument to the genius of Christopher Wren, makes it worth while. Compared with other cathedrals I saw, its chief charm was its individuality. In actual beauty it is greatly surpassed by the pure Gothic or Byzantine or Greek examples of other cities.
One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames. For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things. The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,—twenty-three feet in diameter, some one told me,—had been staring me in the face over a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of “Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed:
“Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too! Ah me! Ah me!”
I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the gay romance of his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all in-born cavaliers, anyhow?
I had been out in various poor sections of the city all day, speculating on that shabby mass that have nothing, know nothing, dream nothing; or do they? It was most depressing, as dark fell, to return through long, humble streets alive with a home-hurrying mass of people—clouds of people not knowing whence they came or why. And now I was to return and go to dine where the laws are made for all England.
I was escorted by another friend, a Mr. M., since dead, who was, when I reached the hotel, quite disturbed lest we be late. I like the man who takes society and social forms seriously, though I would not be that man for all the world. M. was one such. He was, if you please, a stickler for law and order. The Houses of Parliament and the repute of the Hon. T. P. O’Connor meant much to him. I can see O’Connor’s friendly, comprehensive eye understanding it all—understanding in his deep, literary way why it should be so.
As I hurried through Westminster Hall, the great general entrance, once itself the ancient Parliament of England, the scene of the deposition of Edward II, of the condemnation of Charles I, of the trial of Warren Hastings, and the poling of the exhumed head of Cromwell, I was thinking, thinking, thinking. What is a place like this, anyhow, but a fanfare of names? If you know history, the long, strange tangle of steps or actions by which life ambles crab-wise from nothing to nothing, you know that it is little more than this. The present places are the thing, the present forms, salaries, benefices, and that dream of the mind which makes it all into something. As I walked through into Central Hall, where we had to wait until Mr. O’Connor was found, I studied the high, groined arches, the Gothic walls, the graven figures of the general anteroom. It was all rich, gilded, dark, lovely. And about me was a room full of men all titillating with a sense of their own importance—commoners, lords possibly, call-boys, ushers, and here and there persons crying of “Division! Division!” while a bell somewhere clanged raucously.
“There’s a vote on,” observed Mr. M. “Perhaps they won’t find him right away. Never mind; he’ll come.”