It seems odd to make separate comment on something so thoroughly involved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the streets of London; but they contrasted so strangely with those of other cities I have seen that I am forced to comment on them. For one thing, they are seldom straight for any distance, and they change their names as frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. Bond Street speedily becomes Old Bond Street or New Bond Street, according to the direction in which you are going, and I never could see why the Strand should turn into Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate Hill, and then into Cannon Street. Neither could I understand why Whitechapel Road should change to Mile End Road; but that is neither here nor there. The thing that interested me about London streets first was that there were no high buildings, nothing, as a rule, over four or five stories, though now and then you actually find an eight- or nine-story building. There are some near Victoria Street in the vicinity of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. For another thing, the vast majority of these buildings are comparatively old, not new, like those in New York or Rome or Berlin or Paris or Milan. London is older in its seeming than almost any of these other cities, and yet this may be due to the fact that it is smokier than any of the others. I saw it always in gray weather or through, at best, a sunlit golden haze, when it looked more like burnished brass than anything else. Then it was lovely. The buildings in almost all cases were of a vintage which has passed in America. Outside of some of the old palaces and castles in London,—St. James’s, Buckingham, the Tower, Windsor,—there are no fine buildings. The Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals are excluded, of course.
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 inborn cavaliers, anyhow?
I had been out in the East End all day, speculating on that shabby mass that have nothing, know nothing, dream nothing; or do they? I could have cried as dark fell, and I returned through long, humble streets alive with a home-hurrying mass of people—clouds of people not knowing whence they came or why. London always struck me as so vast and so pathetic, 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 the Central Hall, where we had to wait until T. P. 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 back.”
He did return finally, with, after his first greetings, a “Well, now we’ll ate, drink, and be merry,” and then we went in.