We were just in time for the Channel-boat, but our first impression when we stepped on board was not very favourable, thanks to a battery of basins placed under the sofas of the saloon; I began to feel sick on the spot and hurried up on deck where the air felt cool and delicious after the close atmosphere of the saloon. Leaning on the rail, I looked out at the fast disappearing French coast. There was no wind and the ocean was as smooth as a lake. We had a first-rate passage and it only took us three-quarters of an hour to get to Folkestone. We soon perceived the white cliffs of England.
At Folkestone we took the express to London; the train rushed across the pleasant English landscape. All around lay pasture of green velvet with flocks of sheep grazing on the meadows. Soon tall chimneys rose against the sky. Here was London! its suburbs look like one immense building with an endless line of similar houses with boxes of red geraniums on the window-sills, surmounted by numerous chimney-pots smoking in the misty air.
CHAPTER XXII
LONDON
When the train drew up at Charing Cross platform, we hastened to collect our belongings for there was nobody to help us down with our luggage, and we had to find our way alone to Charing Cross Hotel loaded with our hand-bags. We were accosted on our way by a little hunch-backed man who pushed up to us on the crowded platform, a real ant’s nest, and offered in very good Russian his services as guide, proposing to show us the principal sights of London. He must know foreigners by heart to have guessed our nationality at first sight. We turned deaf ears to his importunities, fearing that miserable Æsop to be a pickpocket, but he continued to trot steadily behind us and repeated: “Can I be of any assistance.”
“Thank you,” we replied, “None is needed,” and we entered the hotel. The porter handed over the number of our room to us which proved to be No. 575, then we found ourselves in the lift en route for the fifth floor. As soon as we had repaired somehow, the ravages of sea and train, we went out to saunter through London. When we emerged from the gates of the hotel we again met Mr. Punch, our humpbacked pursuer, and this time we yielded to his assertions that without his aid we should be lost in the immense Metropolis, which he had at his finger ends, and arranged a meeting for the next day at the “Café Gatti” for ten o’clock in the morning. It appears that our guide is a Pole by birth, who had to leave Russia for political reasons after the rising in Poland, and has been settled in London for the last thirty years. This exile must be very trying in his old age. An intense compassion sprang up in my heart for the lonely old Pole, dismissed abroad to end his days, a friendless stranger in a foreign land.
Next morning our guide awaited us at our rendezvous at the appointed hour. We explored London thoroughly, crossing it from beginning to end with the underground railway and other conveyances. It was mid-summer, the season for London; in the streets it is all haste and crowding, thousands and thousands of people all hurrying to some place or other. Especially the crossing of the London Bridge, ploughed in all directions by omnibuses, cabs and private carriages, all tearing this way and that, made my head swim. We both drove and walked a good deal. The streets are very dangerous to cross; our old guide went before us, bent in two, one hand behind his back holding a stick. He was not very reassuring and said that in London, according to statistics, about a dozen persons were run over in the streets by carriages every day. In the City, the business part of the town, the heavy market waggons drawn by great powerful cart-horses especially attracted my attention.
We did a great deal of sight-seeing that day. We began with the Kensington Museum where we saw, amongst the many treasures which the museum contains, the first engine constructed by Stephenson, named by him “The Rocket.” On leaving the museum we were privileged to see one of the most interesting sights of London, the Houses of Parliament, on the roof of which a lamp, the symbol of watchfulness and vigilance, is burning continually. On our way from there to Madame Tussaud’s wax-figure show, we passed the noseless statue of Queen Anne. This damage was done by a hooligan who, profiting by the fog, climbed up the statue with the intention of mutilating it, but he had only time to cut off the nose when the fog cleared away suddenly and the miscreant was laid hold of.
In the main hall of Madame Tussaud’s Museum an orchestra was playing. Amongst the many wax-figures we saw groups of Royalties in the robes and jewels of other times. We were in the company of all the remarkable old Kings and Queens of England and France. We stopped before William the Conqueror, asking Matilda of Flanders to sit down, and Richard Cœur de Lion in domestic argument with sweet Berengaria, whom Madame Tussaud describes in the catalogue as a “Fair flower of Navarre.” Feeling thirsty we entered a bar-room, where we took a sherbet. The waitresses who served there were negligently dressed, with their fringes kept in curling-pins. Their reign only begins at night, when they put on their best attire and try to make themselves irresistible to their customers.
Still indefatigable, we went to visit Westminster Abbey, and saw the hall in the Temple where Shakespeare played before Queen Elizabeth. After that we had a stand up sixpenny lunch in a small and rather shabby establishment, which consisted of one room only, where a white-aproned cook fried mutton-chops served to us on a marble table on which table-cloth and serviettes were conspicuous by their absence.