The Emily Emmins Papers

We discussed the English tendency to elide letters or syllables from their proper names, falling back on the time-worn example of the American who complained that Englishmen spell a name B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p and pronounce it Chumley.

“But it’s better for an American,” said Mr. Travers, “to pronounce a name as it is spelled than to elide at his own sweet will. I met a Chicagoan last summer, who said he intended to run out to Win’c’s’le.”

“What did he mean?” I asked, in my ignorance.

“Windsor Castle,” replied Mr. Travers, gravely.

The mention of Chicago made me remember my companion in the parlor car, and I spoke of her as one type of the American tourist.

“I saw her,” said Mrs. Travers, with that inimitable air of separateness that belongs to the true Londoner; “she is not interesting. Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”

As this so competently described the lady from Chicago, I began to suspect, what I later came thoroughly to realize, that the English are wonderfully adept in the making of picturesque phrases.

During our animated conversation, Miss Travers had said almost nothing.

I had read of the mental blankness of the British Young Person, and was not altogether surprised at this.

But the girl was a delight to look at. By no means of the pink-cheeked, red-lipped variety immortalized in English novels, she was of a delicate build, with a face of transparent whiteness. Her soft light brown hair was carelessly arranged, and her violet eyes would have been pathetic but for a flashing, merry twinkle when she occasionally raised their heavy, creamy lids.

Remembering Mrs. Travers’s aptness in coining phrases of description, I tried to put Rosalind Travers into a few words, but was obliged to borrow from the Master-Coiner, and I called her “The Person of Moonshine.”

By the time I was having my first interview with real Cheddar cheese, the Traverses were inviting me to visit them, and I was gladly accepting their delightfully hospitable and unmistakably sincere invitation.

Scrupulously careful to bid good-bye to my Chicago friend before we reached London, alone I stepped from the train at Euston Station with a feeling of infinite anticipation.

Owing probably to an over-excited imagination, the mere physical atmosphere of the city impressed me as something quite different from any city I had ever seen. I felt as if I had at last come into my own, and had far more the attitude of a returning wanderer than a visiting stranger.

The hansom-cabs did not appear any different from the New York vehicles of the same name, but I climbed into one without that vague wonder as to whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy the outfit than to pay my fare.

My destination was a club in Piccadilly – a woman’s club, which I had joined for the sole purpose of using its house as an abiding-place.

The cab-driver was cordial, even solicitous about my comfort, but finally myself and my hand-luggage were carefully stowed away, the glass was put down, and we started.

It was after dark, and it was raining, two conditions which might appall an unescorted woman in a strange city. The rain was of that ridiculous English sort, where the drops do not fall, but play around in the air, now and then whisking into the faces of passers-by, but never spoiling their clothes. It was enough, though, to wet the asphalt, and when we swung into Piccadilly, and the flashing lights from everywhere dived down into the street, and rippled themselves across the wet blackness of the pavement, I suddenly realized that I was driving over one of the most beautiful things in the world.

I looked out through my hansom-glass darkly, at London. Unknown, mysterious, silent, but enticing with its twinkling eyes, it was like a masked beauty at a ball. Yet, beneath that mocking, elusive witchery, I was conscious of an implied promise, that my London would yet unmask, and I should know and love her face to face.

IV

Mayfair in the Fair Month of May

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?