Portrait of Jane Sterling

Simple Simon.

The trip from Liverpool to London I found to be a green glimpse of England in the shape of a biograph. But the word green, as we say it in our haste, is utterly inadequate to apply to the color of the English landscape. Though of varying shades, it is always green to the n^th power; it is a saturated solution of green; it is a green that sinks into the eye with a sensation of indelibility. And as this green flew by me, I watched it from the window of a car most disappointingly like our own Pullmans.

I had hoped for the humorous absurdities of the compartmented English trains. I had almost expected to see sitting opposite me a gentleman dressed in white paper, and I involuntarily watched for a guard who should look at me through a telescope, and say “You’re travelling the wrong way.”

For my most definite impressions of English railway carriages had been gained from my “Alice,” and I was annoyed to find myself booked for a large arm-chair seat in a parlor car, with my luggage checked to its London destination on “the American plan”!

What, pray, was the use of coming abroad, if one was to have all the comforts of home?

As if to add to the unsatisfactoriness of my first impressions of English travel, I found myself sitting opposite a young American woman.

We faced each other across a small table, covered with what seemed to be green baize, but was more likely the reflection of the insistent landscape.

The lady was one of those hopeless, helpless, newly rich, that affect so strongly the standing of Americans in Europe.

She was blatantly pretty, and began to talk at once, apparently quite oblivious of the self-evident fact that I wanted to absorb in silence that flying green, to which her own nature was evidently quite impervious.

“Your first trip?” she said, though I never knew how she guessed it. “My! it must be quite an event in your life. Now it’s only an incident in mine.”

“You come often, then?” said I, not specially interested.

“Yes; that is, we shall come every summer now. You see, he made a lot of money in copper,—that’s my husband over there, the one with the plaid travelling-cap,—so we can travel as much as we like. We’ve planned a long trip for this year, and we’ve got to hustle, I can tell you. I’m awfully systematic. I’ve bought all the Baedekers, and this year I’m going to see everything that’s marked with a double star. You know those are the ‘sights which should on no account be omitted.’ Then next year we’ll do up the single stars, and after that we can take things more leisurely.”

“You’ve never been over before, then?” I observed.

“No,” she admitted, a little reluctantly; “I went to California last year. I think Americans ought to see their own country first.”

I couldn’t help wishing she had chosen this year for her California trip, but the accumulation of green vision had somehow magicked me into a mood of cooing amiability, and I good-naturedly assisted her to prattle on, by offering an encouraging word now and then.

“He’s so good to me,” she said, nodding toward her husband. “He says he welcomes the coming and speeds the parting dollar. Isn’t that cute? He’s an awfully witty man.”

She described the home he had just built for her in Chicago, and it seemed to be a sort of Liberal Arts Building set in the last scene of a comic opera.

For a moment, I left the green to itself, while I looked at my unrefractive countrywoman with an emotion evenly divided between pity and envy. For had she not reached the ultimate happiness, the apotheosis of content only possible to the wealthy Nitro-Bromide? And what was I that I should depreciate such soul-filling satisfaction? And why should my carping analysis dub it ignorance? Why, indeed!

After a few more green miles, an important-mannered guard, who proved to be also guide, philosopher, and friend, piloted me to a dining-car which might have been a part of the rolling-stock of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Nothing about it suggested the anticipated English discomfort, unless it might be the racks for the glasses, which, after all, relieved one of certain vague apprehensions.

But at dinner it was my good luck to sit in a quartet, the other three members of which were typical English people.

I suppose it is a sort of reflex nervous action that makes people who eat together chummy at once. The fact of doing the same thing at the same time creates an involuntary sympathy which expands with the effects of physical refreshment.

I patted myself on my mental shoulder as I looked at the three pleasant English faces, and I suddenly became aware that, though of a different color, they affected me with exactly the same sensation as the clean, green English scenery.

This, I conclude, was because English people are so essentially a part of their landscape, a statement true of no Americans save the aboriginal Indian tribes.

My table-mates were a perfect specimen of the British matron, her husband, and her daughter. I should describe them as well-bred, but that term seems to imply an effect of acquisition by means of outside influences. They were, rather, well-born, in a sense that implies congenital good-breeding.

Their name was Travers, and we slid into conversation as easily as a launching ship slides down into the water. Naturally I asked them to tell me of London, explaining that it was my first visit there, and I wished to know how to manage it.

“What London do you want to use?” asked Mr. Travers, interestedly. “You know there are many Londons for the entertainment of visitors. We can give you the Baedeker London, or Dickens’s London, or Stevenson’s London, or Bernard Shaw’s London, or Whistler’s London——”

“Or our own W. D. Howells’s London,” I finished, as he paused in his catalogue.

“I think,” I went on, “the London I want is a composite affair, and I shall compile it as I go along. You know Browning says ‘The world is made for each of us,’ and so I think there’s a London made for each of us, and we have only to pick it out from among the myriad others.”

“That’s quite true,” said Mrs. Travers. “You’ll be using, do you see, many bits of those Londons mentioned, but combining them in such a way as to make an individual London all your own.”

The prospect delighted me, and I mentally resolved to build up such a London as never was on land or sea.

“But,” I observed, “aside from an individually theorized London, there must be a practical side that is an inevitable accompaniment. There must be facts as well as opinions. I should be most glad of any hints or advices from experienced and kind-hearted Londoners.”

“Without doubt,” said Mr. Travers, “the question trembling on the tip of your tongue is the one that trembles on the tip of every American tongue that lands on our shores—‘What fee shall I give a cabman?’”

I laughed outright at this, for it was indeed one of my collection of tongue-tipped questions.

He treats you to his opinion of you in choice Billingsgate.

“What waggery,” observed Mrs. Travers.

“Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”

I suppose that the earliest thing that happens anywhere is the London dawn. In all my life, my waking hours had never reached three o’clock A.M., from either direction, and when, on the first morning after my arrival in London, I was awakened at that hour by a gently intrusive daybreak, I felt as if I had received a personal and intentional affront.

I rose, and stalked to the window, with an air of haughty reproach, intending to close the shutters tightly until a more seemly hour.

As there are only six window-shutters in the whole city of London, it is not surprising that none of these was attached to my window; but it really didn’t matter, for after reaching the window that morning I never thought of a shutter again until I returned to America.

My window, which was a large French affair in three parts, looked out upon Piccadilly. It opened on a small stone-railed balcony, and as I looked out three pigeons looked in. They were of the fat and pompous kind and they strutted along the railing, with a frankly sociable air, cocking their heads pertly in an endeavor to draw my attention to the glistening iridescence of their neck-feathers.

I liked the pigeons, and I told them so, but even better I liked the sight across the street.

Green Park at dawn is as solemnly impressive as the interior of Westminster Abbey. The trees sway and quiver, giving an occasional glimpse of the Clock Tower of Parliament House. From the throats of myriad birds comes a sound as of one blended twitter, and a strange, unreal radiance pervades the whole scene. With the rapidly increasing daylight definiteness ensues, and railings, benches, roadway, and other details of the Park add strength to the picture.

Having seen three o’clock in Green Park, I promptly forgot my errand with the shutters, and, hastily donning conventional morning costume, I prepared to watch four o’clock, and five, and six appear from the same direction.

As outlines became clearer I noticed a park bench directly opposite my window, on which sat four old women. All were garbed in black, and all were sleeping soundly. I was then unaware of the large proportion of the elderly feminine in London’s seamy side of population, and so casual was the aspect of the quartet that it did not occur to me they were occupying the only earthly home they possessed.

They seemed to me more like duplicate Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshines, who had paused for a time in Green Park instead of in mid-ocean.

But after I had seen the same women there at three o’clock on a dozen consecutive mornings I began to realize that they were part of the landscape.

Nor was I unduly sorry for them. They sat on that bench with the same air of voluntary appropriation that marked the birds in the trees, or the pigeons on the railing. And as the days went on I became accustomed to seeing them there, and ceased to feel any inclination to go out and try to persuade them to enter an old ladies’ home.

At about seven o’clock the omnibuses began to ply. I had never known before what was indicated by the verb to ply. But I saw at once that it is the only word that properly expresses the peculiar gait of an omnibus, which is a cross between a rolling lurch and a lumbering wobble. Fascination is a mild term for the effect these things had on me.

One omnibus might not so enthrall me. I don’t know; I have never seen one omnibus alone. But the procession of them along Piccadilly is the one thing on earth of which I cannot conceive myself becoming tired.

Their color, form, motion, and sound all partake of the primeval, and their continuity of effect is eternal.

My Baedeker tells me that the first omnibuses plying in London were “much heavier and clumsier than those now in use.” But of course this is a mistake, for they couldn’t have been.

I have heard that tucked away among the gay-colored advertisements that are patchworked all over these moving Mammoth Caves are small and neatly-lettered signs designating destinations. I do not know this. I have never been able to find them. But it doesn’t matter. To get to Hampstead Heath, you take a Bovril; to go to the City, take Carter’s Ink; and to get anywhere in a hurry, jump on a Horlick’s Malted Milk. There is also a graceful serpentine legend lettered down the back of each ’bus, but as this usually says “Liverpool Street,” I think it can’t mean much.

Personally, I never patronize one of the things. They are too uncanny for me, and their ways are more devious than those of our Seventeenth Street horse-cars.

Besides, I always feared that, if I got in or on one, I couldn’t see the rest of them as a whole. And it is the unbroken continuity that, after the coloring, is their greatest charm. I have spent many hours watching the Piccadilly procession of them, “like a wounded snake drag its slow length along,” and look forward to many hours more of the same delight. But the dawn, the daybreak, and the early morning slipped away, and all too soon my first day in London had begun.

My mail brought me difficulties of all sorts. There were invitations from people, whom well-meaning mutual friends had advised of my arrival. There were offers from friends or would-be friends to escort me about on shopping or sight-seeing tours. There were cards for functions of more or less formality, and there were circulars from tradesmen and professional people.

With a Gordian-knot-cutting impulse, I tossed the whole collection into my desk, and started out alone for a morning walk.

Nor shall I ever forget that walk. Not only because it was a “first impression,” but because it was the most beautiful piece of pedestrianism that ever fell to my lot.

My clubhouse home was almost at the corner of Hamilton Place, and as I stepped from its portal out into Piccadilly I seemed to breathe the quintessence of London, past, present, and to come.

Meteorologically speaking, the atmosphere was perfect. The reputation for fogginess, that London has somehow acquired, is a base libel. Its air is marked by a dazzling clearness of haze that, more than anything else, “life’s leaden metal into gold transmutes.”

Thus exhilarated at the start, I began my stroll down Piccadilly, and at every step I added to my glowing sense of satisfied well-being. I turned north into Berkeley Street, and thus started on my first sight-seeing tour. And was it not well that I was by myself?

For the most kind and well-meaning cicerone would probably have said,

“Do you not want to see the house where Carlyle died?”

And how embarrassed would I have been to be obliged to make reply:

“No, not especially. But I do want to see where Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square.”

Nor would my guide have been able to point out that perhaps mythical residence. But I had no trouble in finding it. Unerring instinct guided me along Berkeley Square, till I reached what I felt sure was the very house, and since I was satisfied, what mattered it to any one else?

This being accomplished, I next proceeded in a desultory and inconsequent fashion to explore Mayfair.

Aided, like John Gay, by the goddess Trivia, I knew I could

And as I trod, I suddenly found myself in Curzon Street. This was a pleasant sensation, for did I not well know the name of Curzon Street from all the English novels I had ever read? Moreover, I knew that in one of its houses Lord Beaconsfield died, and in another the Duke of Marlborough lived. The detail of knowing which house was which possessed no interest for me.

I rambled on, marvelling at the suddenness with which streets met each other, and their calm disregard of all method or symmetry, till I began to feel like “the crooked man who walked a crooked mile.”

Attracted by the name of Half-Moon Street, I left Curzon Street for it. Shelley once lived in this street, and I selected three houses any one of which might have been his home. I went back, I traversed some delightful mewses (what is the plural of mews?), crossed Berkeley Square, and then, somehow or other, I found myself in Bond Street, and my mood changed. At first the shops seemed unattractive and I felt disappointment edging itself into my soul.

But like an ugly woman, possessed of charm, the crammed-full windows began to fascinate me, and I forgot the inadequate sidewalks and unpretentious faÇades in the absorbing displays of wares.

Bond Street shop-windows are hypnotic. Fifth Avenue windows stolidly hold their exhibits up to one’s view, without a trace of invitation, but Bond Street windows compel one to enter, by a sort of uncanny influence impossible to resist.

Though I expected to shop in London, there was only one article that I was really anxious to buy. This was a jade cube. For many years I had longed for a jade cube, and American experts had contented themselves with stating there was no such thing in existence. Time after time, I had begged friends who were going to the ends of the earth to bring me back a jade cube from one of the ends, but none had accomplished my errand.

I determined therefore to use every effort to secure a jade cube for myself, and forthwith began my quest.

A mineralogist on Bond Street showed more interest at once than any of my personal friends had ever evinced. Though he declared there was no such thing in existence, he further remarked his entire willingness to cut one for me from the best quality of Chinese jade.

He was quite as interested as I was myself, and, though it seemed inartistic to end so quickly what I had expected to be a long and difficult quest, I left the order.

The cube turned out a perfect success, and will always be one of my dearest and best-loved possessions. It has the same charm of perfection that characterizes a Japanese rock-crystal ball, and the added interest of being unique. There was, too, a charm in the interest shown in the cube by the old mineralogist, and also by his wife.

The day I went after the completed polished cube, the elderly madame came into the shop from a back room, to congratulate me on the attainment of my desire.

Incidentally, the good people endeavored (and successfully) to persuade me to buy further of their wares.

They had a bewildering assortment of semi-precious stones, curious minerals, and wrought metals and strange bits of handiwork from foreign countries. Beads, of course, in profusion, and fascinatingly ugly little idols. As all these things have great charm for me, and as I am always easily persuaded to buy, I bought largely, to the great satisfaction of the elderly shopkeepers. But, as I had learned a little of their tricks and their manners I offered them, a bit shamefacedly, a lower price in each instance than they asked. To my relief, they took this proceeding quite as a matter of course, and cheerfully accepted the smaller sum without demur.

But to return to that first morning, after my interview with the mild-mannered mineralogist I strolled along Old Bond Street back to Piccadilly.

The Tennyson’s Brook of omnibuses was still going on, and I stood on the corner to watch them again. From this point of view the effect is quite different from that seen from an upstairs window.

You cease to generalize about the procession, and regard the individual ’bus with a new awe.

The ocean may be wider,—the Flatiron Building may be taller,—but there’s nothing in all the world so big as a London omnibus.

He so dominates the group of tourists he conducts that they often show signs of almost human intelligence.

Londoners have no definiteness of any sort. Their most striking trait is, paradoxically, a vague uncertainty, and this is seen in everything connected with London, from the weather to the gauzy, undecided, wavering scarfs which the women universally wear.

Indeed I do not know of anything that so perfectly represents the mentality of an Englishwoman as these same uncertain morsels of drapery.

This state of things is doubtless founded on a logical topographical fact. Baedeker states that the city of London is built on a tract of undulating clay soil, and the foundation of the average Londoner’s mind seems to be of equal instability.

I have learned from the recent newspapers that, owing to these lamentable subsoil conditions, Saint Paul’s Cathedral is even now cracking and crumbling, and parallel cases may sometime be noted among the great minds of the Britons.

I trust this will not be mistakenly thought to mean any disparagement to the British mind, whether great or small. It is, I am sure, a matter of taste; and the English people prefer their waveringness of brain, as the Pisan Tower prefers to lean.

The result of this state of things is, naturally, a lack of a sense of proportion, and an absolute ignorance of values.

And it is this that makes it impossible, or at least improbable, to generalize about the manners and customs of London’s polite society; though indeed anything so uncertain as their society ways can scarcely be called customs.

I received one morning from Mrs. C. a hastily-written note of invitation to dine with her that same evening.

“Quite informally,” the note said, “and afterward,” it went on, “we will drop in at Lady Sutherland’s.”

As I had learned that “quite informally” meant anything its writer chose it to mean, I was uncertain as to the formality of the function, and, having no idea who Lady Sutherland might be, I asked information of a casual caller.

“Who is she?” was the response, “why, in social importance, she’s only next to the King! that’s all! She’s the Duchess of Sutherland. She lives in Stafford House. You may not be familiar with Stafford House, but it is on record that when Queen Victoria was there, calling on a former Duchess of Sutherland, she took her leave with the remark, ‘I will now go from your palace to my humble home,’ referring to her own residence in Buckingham.”

I was dumfounded! To be invited to Stafford House in that careless way, and to have the Duchess of Sutherland mentioned casually as Lady Sutherland,—well!

And so for the informal dinner I arrayed myself in the most elaborate costume in my wardrobe.

Nor was I overdressed. The informal dinner proved to be a most pompous function, and after it we were all whisked into carriages, and taken to the reception at Stafford House.

Once inside of the beautiful palace I ceased to wonder at Queen Victoria’s remark. Admitted to be the most beautiful of all English private mansions, Stafford House seemed to my American inexperience far more wonderful than Aladdin’s palace could possibly have been.

The magnificent Entrance Hall, with its branching staircase and impressive gallery, seemed an appropriate setting for the beautiful Duchess, who stood on the staircase landing to greet her guests. Robed in billows of white satin, and adorned with what seemed to me must be the crown jewels, the charming, gracious lady was as simple and unaffected of manner as any American girl. She greeted me with a sincerity of welcome that had not lost its charm by having already been accorded to thousands of others.

Then, a mere atom of the thronging multitude, I was swept on by the guiding hands of belaced and bepowdered lackeys, and, quite in keeping with the unexpectedness of all things in London, I found myself suddenly embarked on a sightseeing tour. But this was a sort of sightseeing toward which I felt no objection. To be jostled by thousands, all arrayed in costumes and jewels that were sights in themselves; to visit not only the great picture gallery of Stafford House, but the smaller apartments, rarely shown to visitors; to be treated by guests and attendants as an honored friend of the family and not as an intruder; all these things made me thoroughly enjoy what would otherwise have been a sightseeing bore.

It was a marvellous pageant, and to stand looking over the railing of the high balcony at the crush of vague-expressioned lights of London society, drifting slowly up the staircase in their own impassive way, was to me a “Sight Which Should on No Account be Omitted.”

With a sort of chameleonic tendency, I involuntarily acquired a similar air, and like one in a dream I was introduced to celebrities of all degrees. Authors of renown, artists of repute, soldiers of glorious record, all were presented in bewildering succession.

Their demeanor was invariably gracious, kindly, and charming; they addressed me as if intensely interested in my well-being, past, present, and future. And yet, combined with their warm interest, was that indefinite, preoccupied, waveringness of expression, that made me feel positive if I should suddenly sink through the floor the speaker would go on talking just the same, quite unaware of my absence.

The feast prepared for this grand army of society was on a scale commensurate with the rest of the exhibition.

Apparently, whoever was in charge had simply provided all there was in the world of everything; and a guest had merely to mention a preference for anything edible, and it was immediately served to him.

The Londoners of course, being quite unaware what they wanted to eat, vaguely suggested one thing or another at random; and the vague waiters, apparently knowing the game, brought them something quite different. These viands the Londoners consumed with satisfaction; but in what was unmistakably a crass ignorance of what they were eating.

All this fascinated me so that I greatly desired to try experiments, such as sprinkling their food thickly with red pepper or putting sugar in their wine. I have not the slightest doubt that they would have calmly continued their repast, without the slightest suspicion of anything wrong.

The air of the “passive patrician” of London society is unmistakable, inimitable, and absorbingly interesting; and never did I have a better opportunity to observe it than at the beautiful reception at Stafford House to which I was invited, “quite informally.”

In contrast to this, and as a fine example of the Londoner’s utter absence of a sense of proportion, listen to the tale of a lady who called on me one day.

I had met her before, but knew her very slightly. She was exceedingly polite, and well-bred, and of very formal manner.

The purpose of her call was to invite me to her house. She definitely stated a date ten days hence, and asked if I would enjoy a bread-and-milk supper. “For we are plain folk,” she said, “and do not entertain on an elaborate scale.”

I accepted with pleasure, and she went politely away.

But I was not to be fooled by intimations of informality. “Bread and milk,” indeed! that, I well knew, was a euphonious burlesque for a high tea if not a sumptuous dinner. I remembered that she had called personally to invite me; that she asked me ten days before the occasion; and that the hour, seven o’clock, might mean anything at all.

Therefore, when the day came, I donned evening costume, called a hansom, and started.

I had never been to the house before, and on reaching it found myself confronted by a high stone wall and a broad wooden door.

Pushing open the latter, I doubtfully entered, and seemed to be in a large and somewhat neglected garden filled with a tangle of shrubs, vines, and flowers. Magnificent old trees drooped their branches low over the winding paths; rustic arbors, covered with earwiggy vines, would have delighted Amy March; here and there a broken and weather-beaten statue of stone or marble poked its head or its headlessness up through the wandering branches.

I started uncertainly along the most promising of the paths, and at last came in sight of a house.

A picturesque affair it was. A staircase ran up on the outside, and a tree,—an actual tree—came up through the middle of the roof. It was like a small, tall cottage, almost covered with rambling vines, and surrounded by an irregular, paved court.

From an inconspicuous portal my hostess advanced to greet me. She wore a summer muslin, simply made, and I promptly felt embarrassed because of my stunning evening gown.

Her welcome was most cordial, and expressive of beaming hospitality.

“You must enter by the back door,” she explained, “as the vines have grown over the trellis, so that we cannot get around them to the front door to enter; though of course we can go out at it. But this side of the house is more picturesque, anyway. Do you not think it delightful?”

A bit bewildered, I was ushered into a room, strange, but most interesting. It contained a mantel and fireplace which had been originally in Oliver Goldsmith’s house, and which was a valuable gem, both intrinsically and by association. The other fittings of the room were quite in harmony with this unique possession, and showed experienced selection, and taste in arrangement. The next room, in the centre of the house, was the one through which the tree grew. Straight up, from floor to ceiling, the magnificent trunk formed a noble column, around which had been built a somewhat undignified table.

Another room was entirely furnished with wonderful specimens of old Spanish marquetry—such exquisite pieces that it seemed unfair for one person to own them all. Any one of them would have been a gem of any collection.

My friend was a charming hostess; and when her husband appeared, he proved not only a charming host, but a marvellous conversationalist.

So engrossed did we all become in talking, so quick were my friends at repartee, so interesting the tales they told of their varied experiences, that the time slipped away rapidly, and the quaint old clock, which was a gem of some period or other, chimed eight before any mention had been made of the evening meal.

“Why, it’s after supper-time!” exclaimed my hostess, “let us go to the dining-room at once.”

The dining-room was another revelation. One corner was occupied by a huge, high-backed angle-shaped seat of carved wood, which carried with it the atmosphere of a ruined cathedral or a Hofbrauhaus. The latter effect was perhaps due to the sturdy oaken table which had been drawn into the corner, convenient to the great settee.

After we were seated, a maid suddenly appeared. She was garbed in a gorgeous and elaborate costume which seemed to be the perfection of a peasant’s holiday attire. Huge gold earrings and strings of clinking beads were worn with a confection of bright-colored satin and cotton lace, which would have been conspicuous in the front row of a comic opera chorus.