It was a Sunday in London—gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look to them out of windows in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the plague were in the city, and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.

Charles Dickens.

When, as a boy of ten (driven from Paris by General Trochu's proclamation before the siege as a bouche inutile), I first set my eyes on the world's metropolis, my impressions were not favourable. Ugh! that first Sunday in London! It was like a day of death, a day among the tombs.

What a change from the Paris of the Third Empire!

I had been suddenly translated from an airy, flower-festooned apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, to a dirty brick lodging-house in the Pentonville Road, with a soot-garden in front and a dingy penitentiary across the way.

Never before had I seen a brick house, soot-garden, or penitentiary; and novelty for once failed to lure my youthful eye.

It was then that the purple-faced landlady in the rusty black gown assured my father that the place was "exceedingly respectable."

"What is that?" asked my elder brother John in French—"c'est tres quoi?"

"Respectable," repeated my father.

"Respectable," quoth John. "What we call triste, hein?"

And my father, who was ever grave as a tetrarch, smiled.

I knew only two or three English phrases then, such as "I am pretty and vell; how vos you?" "If you please," "menny of zem," etc. etc.

Never till then had I heard the British national word; and when my father explained that "respectability" meant "une nature honorable," we boys looked out at the soot-garden and penitentiary, and marvelled why honour in London looked so dirty.

The next day was Sunday, and our landlady furnished us with the name of a "most respectable" church near Clerkenwell Prison.

But John expressed a suspiciously fervent and pious desire to attend service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and when my mother looked hard at him he blushed. That settled it. I was ordered to put on my new Sunday boots, and go with him.

When we got outside, John took the precaution, by way of a start, to box my ears for being an artful little mouchard, and then set off as fast as he could go, with a view to leaving me behind.

His legs were long, mine were short, and I wore my Sunday boots. Besides, I was hindered by rude insular boys, who stood in my way pointing to my Parisian headgear, and shouting barbarian phrases which I have since recognised as "Who's your 'atter?"

We ran, as I have since ascertained, through Euston Square, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury Square, Bedford Square, twice round Russell Square, and then somehow got back to Euston. Then John stopped. The fact was he was lost. But he put a bold front on the matter, and said we would go and dance with the London 'prentice lads and fair-haired Saxon maids, first at Westminster and then at Tower Green. He told me he had seen pictures in which the youth of Britain, in gaily-coloured attire, were shown dancing round garlanded and festooned poles. He fancied the sports were held at Westminster. But was sure some were held on Tower Hill. Was I brave enough to join the venture and risk the after-part?

I was a nice, well-meaning boy, but before his dazzling array of temptations I fell at once.

John knew a little English—learnt at the LycÉe St. Louis—but, as he confided to me after several interviews with the ignorant Londoners, these persons did not understand their own tongue; and it seemed to take a long time to teach it them.

So we trudged again through the dreadful, dreary, desolate squares, with their carefully railed regulation patches of soot-gardens, and indefinable, uniform air of hypochondriacal blight.

I believe we should have walked round and round those grim and forbidding dwelling-boxes all day, had we not, after many attempts, discovered a man who knew a little French, and who offered to take us down to Westminster.

John asked him about the Squares. "Are they barracks?" he said, "or workmen's dwellings?"

"Mais, non," answered our guide, looking shocked, "they are the dwellings of the most respectable people."

Again that mystic word "respectable." Again the atmosphere of dignified dumps and dingy sulkiness. And father had told us that "respectability" was "an honourable nature." London honour seemed a sad thing.

The story of that day's spree ought to be published as a Sunday-school tract. It was the most chastening experience I ever underwent.

A few months later we were in the midst of barricades and street massacres in Paris; but even that weird experience has left no such impression of blank and heavy gloom upon my memory as the dismal reconnaissance into the London Sabbath and British respectability whereof this is the true account.

Those miles of deserted and colourless streets under the narrow glimpses of leaden sky, with the solitary heavy figure of the large British policeman everlastingly in the foreground—mon Dieu! in what clammy, icy bands of unrelieved wretchedness they strangled the exuberance of our boyish hearts upon that dull September Sunday!

Besides, I wore my Sunday boots.

The man who spoke French, or who, at least, understood some of John's English, left us at Charing Cross, and we went on alone to the joyous dance and revels of Westminster.

John had mentioned them to the man, so far as his resources would allow; but the man only shook his head and muttered something about Cremorne, which John explained to me, must be the name of the queen of the revels.

And when we got there—oh dear! oh dear!—frosty-faced, dun-coloured, British matrons and virgins with ivory-backed prayer-books were streaming out of the Abbey, and a drizzling chilly rain and mist had begun to fall over the scene, when John, distracted and discomfited, stumbled over the boots of the customary policeman.

"Milles pardons!" said John, lifting his hat, "but ve seek vere ze girls and boys dance ze Sunday."

"Daunce!" replied the heavy policeman, "daunce a' Sundays? Nice, respectable little boys you must be, I down't think!"

We didn't understand all he said, but we heard the chilly word "respectable," and didn't get warm again till we had run to the City.

To tell all the adventures of that terrible day would be to repeat, with variations, the tale I've told so far. The City finished our spirits. Even liquorice-water would not raise one's courage in these "catacombs with the roof off," as John aptly described the tomb-like streets.

And the Tower, which John had represented to me as a sort of Versailles or Fontainebleau, with fountains, flower-beds, and avenues on the exterior, and British lions, crowns, and a plentiful supply of beheaded traitors constantly on view inside, was the last straw.

It was, as the usual policeman told John, "closed on Sundays."

Then I fell upon a seat, repentant, and vowed I'd tell my mother.

Finally, we compromised, on my brother's promising to pay the omnibus fare home, for the which I was to declare that we had lost our way, and to deny that we had been upon the spree.

I felt that I could do this without injury to my conscience, and when we returned to the soot-garden I did it.

John got a hiding all the same, and I didn't offer myself as a substitute; for my feet were very sore, and I felt that he was a wicked boy who deserved all the chastisement he could get.

In the days which followed, my understanding of "respectability" was much ripened.

There was another family in the house.

Its head was a fat old lady with corkscrew ringlets (I'd never seen corkscrew ringlets before), who sat everlastingly in front of the fire, like Patience in a hair-seated rocking-chair (I'd never seen a hair-seated chair before), toasting endless slices of bread (I'd never seen toast before). There were her two thin, middle-aged, maiden daughters, who were perfect types of the British old maid (and I'd never seen an old maid before). There was also a son, who washed up the pots, and occasionally went out into the garden to feed the hens, dressed in a pair of shabby gaiters, a rusty tall hat, and a cane.

The landlady informed us that they were a family of the highest respectability. They never paid any rent, and owed money to all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood; but they always went to church on Sundays and were most respectable people.

My mother asked why the son didn't go to work.

"Work?" said the landlady, with a pitying smile. "None of the Ropers were ever known to work. The family is too respectable."

There was another thing I saw for the first time in that house, and that was a drunken woman.

The landlady, robbed of rent and food by the Ropers, who were too respectable to be turned out, had grown poor and dismal, and had taken to pawn her belongings for gin. I had never heard of gin before, nor ever seen a gin-palace. It was our landlady who bribed me for the first time to enter a London public-house—a flaring, reeking, typical London gin-palace. The sight and smell of the place filled me with a loathing which I have never forgotten.

But "here's a penny for yourself," said she, "and it's a most respectable house."

And that was my first introduction to English respectability.

No wonder that I preferred Parisian wickedness!