Title: London as seen by Charles Dana Gibson
Author: Gibson, Charles Dana
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "London as seen by Charles Dana Gibson" ***


available at The Internet Archive)



                                LONDON

                              AS SEEN BY

                          CHARLES DANA GIBSON

                               NEW YORK

                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

                              MDCCCXCVII

              Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner’s Sons

   Thanks are due to _Life_ and the _London Graphic_ for their kind
      permission to reproduce some of the drawings in this book.

                            TROW DIRECTORY

                   PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

                               NEW YORK



LONDON STREETS


[Illustration: The Rat Man]

AFTER a short journey through country divided by hedges into a green and
gold checker-board; thatched roofs disappear, and chimney-pots take
their place and flourish until you come to the Thames, where black
barges in mid-stream wait for the muddy tide to turn, between banks of
masts and smokestacks; then the Gothic buildings of Parliament, and “Big
Ben,” and Charing Cross Station; and in another moment you are in
London, riding through the never-ending restlessness of its streets in a
cab that you can afford, with your hat-box safe by your side and your
trunk up by the driver, and London with its history on all sides of you,
its wooden streets and polished side-walks and bright shop windows, and
at every corner small sweeps and big policemen, providing clean and safe
crossing, while push-carts dodge in and out between steaming bus-horses
and hansom cabs. This is always my first impression of London.

[Illustration: _Outside Morley’s_]

As all Americans arrive in London with sea-legs after a week of ship’s
cooking, it is doubly necessary to have been there before in order to
know where to go at once for an on-shore dinner and good rooms. But
before you arrive at either of these you once more become a part of the
city and again feel perfectly at home, as you look from your cab window
at theatrical lithographs to find out what is going on for that night;
and no transformation scene on the stage is more complete than your own,
from standing in the companion-way waiting for the ship’s run to be
posted, to a few hours later sitting in a London theatre watching the
stage rock from side to side.

I believe an American enjoys London more during his second visit. He is
sure to be older for one thing, and with very little left of the
prejudice he once had. He is not so apt to wear a sensitive patriotic
chip on his shoulder, and for this reason he will give London a better
opportunity to know him. If it is your second visit you have the
pleasure of recognizing familiar types and places. Your hotel porter may
remember you, and there may be one or two of the old waiters still left
in the dining-room. Nelson’s Column and the National Gallery are former
friends; also the recruiting sergeants, among them Sergeant Charley, the
best known of all. He has stood at the corner of the National Gallery
for many years, and has probably talked more country boys into Her
Majesty’s service, consoled more weeping mothers, and cheered more
disappointed maidens than any other man in the British army. There is no
better place in which Sergeant Charley can operate than Trafalgar
Square--or from which the stranger can begin London.

[Illustration: _Between Times, Leicester Square_]

[Illustration: _On Bond Street_]

The bewildering scene always reminds me of the art student I once saw
painting it from the steps of the gallery; and I thought then that if
the actors on the great stage in front of her could have seen the
hopeless condition of her canvas and her pale, worried face they might
have stood still for awhile. But the panorama has never stopped, and the
only quiet figures in Trafalgar Square are its bronze statues. There you
will see country boys looking, with admiring envy, at the smart uniforms
of the soldiers, and with terror at the dingy army of sandwich-men
shuffling through the gutter carrying advertisements of hot and cold
luncheons, Turkish baths, manicure parlors, and places of amusement,
serving, at the same time, as awful examples of what will happen to all
those who do not take the sergeant’s advice and become soldiers. Even
some of the street beggars are familiar. “The old rat-man” and his pets
find Brighton too dull in the winter, and come up to London for the
season, to mix once more in its streets, where all kinds of horses are
driven by as great a variety of men, from the pedler to the
powdered-wigged coachman. Cable-cars and trolleys would be sadly out of
place in London, and horseless carriages would be a calamity. There
should be no need to go faster than a horse can trot, and the best way
of all is to walk.

[Illustration: _Sergeant Charley_]

You can stand on a bridge while scows drift slowly under you, and St.
Paul’s sinks into the smoke and darkness, like the dissolving views at a
lecture on travel. It is quite proper that the underground railway
should be used mostly for advertising purposes; but the most gaudy
posters fail to brighten up those dingy tunnels, and no amount of speed
can compensate for the time you are away from the world over your head.
London is not a place to go under.

There is no reason to be lonely. No one ever knows London, and before
you have been there long you are showing Londoners about their own city
with the pride of a part owner in its history; for, to an American, the
old part of the city is his--as much so as the portraits of his
ancestors. The pictures may not be on his walls, but he stands as good a
chance of being like their originals as the man who owns the house in
which they hang.

[Illustration: _Hyde Park Corner_]



LONDON AUDIENCES


NOWHERE is caste more noticeable than in a London audience. A little
board fence divides the ground-floor of a theatre into orchestra stalls
and a pit. It would cost you ten shillings less and your social position
to sit on the wrong side of this fence. It does not follow that sitting
on the right side of it assures your position. But it does give you an
uninterrupted view of the stage. No hats are worn, and that alone makes
it worth extra charge. There is, in most of the theatres, room for your
knees, and in some, additional room for the man who goes out between the
acts, and people who arrive after the curtain is up. A London audience
is brilliant. Everyone is in evening dress, and the audience is often
more entertaining than the play. This is especially true on a first
night. At such times the pit is watched most anxiously by the
management, as the success of the piece generally depends on their
verdict. It has often occurred to me, when I have seen them on a stormy
night forming a line on the pavement outside the pit entrance, taking it
all seriously enough to stand there for hours before the doors were
opened, that by letting them inside the management might improve their
spirits, and they in their turn might be more gentle.

[Illustration: Outside the Pit Entrance]

And it has also occurred to me that the management might further improve
the spirits of their audience by doing away with women ushers, and by
selling the programme at the same time they sell the seat; for it is
hardly fair to the first act of a play to make it overcome the
fretfulness caused by annoying attendants before it can hope to amuse.
But the second act is sure to have a fair start, and if the play is good
from there on, it will have no reason to complain of the audience.

An Englishman’s memory begins with a pantomime. A Drury Lane audience
easily explains this, as a large portion of it is composed of children.
This is just as it should be. The only mistake is that each year the
clown and pantaloon have less to do. Last winter they only appeared in
front of the drop curtain, and had difficulty in entertaining the
audience until the next scene had been set. It is strange that this
should happen among people who are naturally so true to old friends. In
the place of harlequin’s tricks they have the aërial ballets and
electrical effects, and altogether a performance that can be done just
as well at the Empire or the Alhambra. This is dangerous, for it might
in time change the character of a pantomime audience.

[Illustration: _A First Night_]

[Illustration: _Small Wigs and Big Fees_]

[Illustration: _In the Lord Chief Justice’s Court_]

A fancy dress-ball in London is slow. The general orders are, “keep
moving along.” The man who manages the search-light, from one of the top
boxes, probably enjoys the ball the most. He certainly does more to help
it. The centre of interest is wherever he will have it. He can make a
dull costume bright, and a supper-party in one of the boxes proud; and
he can almost remove the gloom caused by the officials in black.

The greatest variety of expressions are to be seen in the audiences that
come together at the law courts. There is the never-changing face of the
judge, and the ever-changing face of the witness rocking from side to
side in his box, and there are the black-robed barristers with small
wigs and big fees, and pale law students crowding in at the doors and
filling the passage-ways; and in front of the long table that is covered
with papers and high hats sit those most interested in what is going
on--care-worn parents and women thickly veiled.

[Illustration: _In the “Whispering Gallery”_--A Small Loan]

The most interesting place of amusement for men is the National Sporting
Club. Every Monday night during the winter the sports of London meet
there in the same building that Colonel Newcome and his son once left
because they objected to Captain Costigan’s song. The Colonel would be
more amused there now, well-trained and scientific boxers from all the
world meet in a roped-in square, surrounded by an orderly crowd of
stock-brokers, bankers, and miscellaneous sporting characters, who wait
for the best man to win. Then they adjourn to a front room, and around
the bar and little tables they talk about by-gone fights and the men and
horses whose pictures cover the wall. Some find their way to the Strand,
where, in a supper-room called Marble Halls, every variety of sport in
all stages of luck, and actors from the neighboring theatres, discuss
the fight of the evening round by round.

[Illustration: _At the National Sporting Club_]

A Music Hall audience is the most demonstrative and amusing. It will
applaud the longest, hiss the loudest, and sometimes join in the chorus.
From the moment the numbers are posted announcing the next turn, it is
easy to tell what the performer’s reception will be. On both sides of
the orchestra are bars, and when a London barmaid stops work to listen
and laugh you may be sure that the turn is a good one. Last winter they
paid Dan Leno this compliment. The air is filled with tobacco-smoke, and
the calcium-light, on its way from the gallery to the stage, looks like
a sunbeam in a dusty hayloft.

[Illustration: _At the Pavilion_]



LONDON PARKS


[Illustration: _A Sidewalk Artist_]

THE first and most natural question asked of any city is “Show us your
people.” In answer to this, London may safely begin by pointing to its
parks, and especially so on any Sunday during the season, for on that
day you can best see how caste has assorted and parcelled the city off
into so many exhibits, as carefully arranged as the specimens in the
British Museum.

The walks in Hyde Park have their special social value, as much so as
the walks in life; and in the park or in life, whichever path an
Englishman uses, it is safe to suppose that his ancestors walked there
before him. The parks of London are handy. From a Piccadilly club window
can be seen sheep enough to fill a barn-yard, and a stone’s throw from
the Horse Guards is St. James’s Park with its duck island, where all
kinds of rare birds flock together; and their relatives in far-away
countries are no better fed than these happy exiles in the heart of the
great city, and the peacocks that ornament the banks of the Serpentine
are as happy as the boys who sail the toy-boats on that toy river.

[Illustration: _Sunday Morning near Stanhope Gate_]

Sunday is Hyde Park’s day “At Home,” and in the shape of a blue sky she
sends her invitation to all London, and her popularity is easily shown
by the number and variety of her friends. By long odds the best-looking
exhibit is to be seen during church-parade. It extends from Hyde Park
Corner to Stanhope Gate, and consists of the well-to-do, most of whom
probably first came to the park with their nurses and a little later
with their tutors, and they now come grown up and with white hair to pay
their respects to the good doctor of their childhood. They form what is
distinctly a Sunday gathering, and one as serious as a wedding. Seldom a
loud voice is heard. There is a feeling of rest throughout the whole
scene, and it is impossible to be there without entering into the spirit
of it. In the solemn throng that pass and repass I have seen a noisy
steamer acquaintance thoroughly subdued and looking like an undertaker
in a long coat and high hat. Everyone else seemed to have been there
from childhood. The old gentleman in the Row undoubtedly first appeared
there on Shetland ponies under the watchful eye of the groom. It is not
a thing to tire of, and Sunday after Sunday these well-dressed people
attend church-parade as seriously as they attend church. A little
farther into the park are the shopkeepers and domestics listening to the
band. Here you are likely to meet the real estate agent and tailor with
whom you have already had dealings. They are a distinct class, and very
different from the first exhibit. They keep their frock-coats carefully
buttoned, and are apparently not so much at their ease.


[Illustration: _HAMLET_]

[Illustration: _A Constitutional in the Park_]

[Illustration: _In the Row_]

[Illustration: _A Park Orator_]

Separated from these people by another social gulf, and toward Marble
Arch, are the unemployed listening to the park actors and park orators.
If you are tall enough to look over the heads of an English crowd you
will see in some of these groups strolling players at work. In the
centre of one group a short, red-faced park orator declares that a Prime
Minister has robbed him.

The farther away from these shady paths the sadder London is. Among them
foreigners feel at home. Little home-sick law students from India may
mope in Piccadilly, but in Hyde Park they look happy. Once there the
British soldier is no longer war-like; he becomes helpless and happy,
surrounded by nature and under the influence of some pink-cheeked
domestic.

In the early part of the day the parks are occupied by very young
people; the visitors become older with the day. The nurses and their
charges leave, and evening finds an old lady leaning on her husband’s
arm, walking slowly along their favorite path, while their carriage
follows at a little distance. And as night comes on they roll back into
the great city among the never-ceasing tread of feet, past the side-walk
artist sitting by his pictures on the pavement, looking anxiously at the
passers-by--and the park’s day is done--a curtain of darkness falls on
the great stage; the peacocks go to roost in its trees; the ducks are
undisturbed by wet dogs, and the Serpentine’s small fish are no longer
in danger of bent pins; and the park, London’s kind friend and good
physician, is resting.

[Illustration: _Church Parade_]

[Illustration: _After Hours_]



A DRAWING-ROOM


ON March 11, 1896, the first Drawing-room of that year was held at
Buckingham Palace. Through the courtesy of the Lord Chamberlain I was
given the entree to the palace on that day. As a Drawing-room is
strictly a feminine affair, it matters very little what a man may think
about it, for the line points of social advantages and the costly
costumes he seldom understands. Apart from the foreign ambassadors,
members of the Cabinet and attendants, men are not wanted and are seldom
seen. Women go in hundreds, and sit for hours in carriages, extending in
long rows down the Mall, while a crowd of curious idlers stare in at the
carriage windows, making audible personal remarks. At two o’clock the
palace gates are open, and the waiting continues in the different rooms
above stairs.

[Illustration: _Waiting_]

[Illustration: _A Barrier_]

[Illustration: _After Presentation_]

These rooms are divided by barriers, guarded by gentlemen of the
household, which prevents over-crowding. It is an extraordinary sight to
see room after room filled with nervous young girls and their more
composed mothers sitting in the unbecoming light of an afternoon sun,
with white plumes in their hair and the family jewels on their necks.
With the exception of a now and then whispered conversation, everything
is quiet until the barriers leading into the next room are opened; then
a rush follows and small pieces of lace, spangles, flowers, and ostrich
feathers are left on the floor. Mothers and daughters are separated.
After the confusion of finding each other, all is quiet for another
thirty minutes, when a rush for a better place in the next room begins.
A retired Colonel, the guardian of a barrier, noticing my interest and
my evening dress, asked me if I did not think it looked like an ostrich
farm. He pointed out his wife to me, and said a French hairdresser had
been at his house all that morning. The Colonel’s pretty wife looked it.
From there I crossed the ambassadors’ room and the picture-gallery,
where the people who have the entree wait, and entered the throne-room.
At that time there were three men in it; two of them, gentlemen of the
household, were standing on either side of the door. One of them told me
that the young officer with a bearskin hat on his arm, standing by a
long window overlooking the central court, was there to signal to the
band outside when the royal family entered, in order that they might
know when to play “God Save the Queen.” He also motioned with his head
toward a small door in one corner of the big red room, and said through
it the royal party would enter. I asked the same gentleman why
Drawing-rooms were not held in the evening. He said he did not know. At
this time the Prime-Minister, in a dark uniform with a blue ribbon
across his breast, entered the room, followed by Court dignitaries,
gentlemen ushers, and the Lord Chamberlain with his staff of office.
Then the little door opened, and while the band played “God Save the
Queen,” the Princess of Wales and the royal party filed in. Then there
was a low bow on both sides; the Lord Chamberlain took his position by
the Princess of Wales, and read from the cards handed him by the ushers
the names of those who were being presented.

[Illustration]

After the ambassadors and their wives came those having the entree;
after them those without. The white procession had started, and the
Drawing-room that had been rehearsed and looked forward to for years, as
far as each individual’s part in it was concerned, was soon over. At the
end of two hours there was another low bow, and the royal family filed
back through the little door. The bustle and waiting was transferred to
the grand hall below, where little olive-skinned Indian ladies of high
birth, and famous English beauties whose photographs could be bought on
Piccadilly, stood side by side until their carriages stopped the way.
Mothers and daughters passed between rows of Yeomen of the Guard to the
door, daylight, and the photographers; finally home, where tea is
arranged, and friends are gathered to hear about it.

I had a second opportunity to see a Drawing-room, and I am of the
impression that they must be very much alike.

[Illustration: _A Gentleman at Arms_]

[Illustration: _A Drawing-room Tea_]



LONDON SALONS


[Illustration: _An Early Departure_]

THE “season” begins about the time Parliament opens, and Parliament’s
opening and closing depends more or less on fox-hunting and
grouse-shooting. As the “season” approaches, town-houses are opened and
“green” servants are broken in; secretaries busy themselves with lists
and stationery, and the winter campaign begins immediately upon the
family’s return to town. As a London house is seldom needed for more
than the formal entertainments of a season, it is in most cases hired;
consequently, it is seldom attractive. Acquaintances are entertained in
the city, and friends are taken into the country to spend the week’s end
on the family estate, surrounded by the household gods and the most
attractive side of all England. There the future members of the House of
Lords, and the belles of some future Drawing-room, ride donkeys, and the
older people ride wheels and sit under English oaks and make little
water-color sketches, and it is easily seen why only social duties take
them to London.

[Illustration: _Distinguished Guests_]

By eight o’clock in the evening almost every other house that you see
will have a little red carpet stretching from its door to the curb, and
in some cases a temporary awning over it. The streets seem to be given
over entirely to carriages and hansoms carrying people to dinner. When
the last guest has arrived the carpet is taken in until later on, when
it again rolls back down the steps and across the pavement, between two
lines of footmen, while the butler whistles for hansoms, and half of
fashionable London goes to its own house, its club, or its lodgings. A
Member of Parliament, during a short recess, will leave the House and
drive miles to a dinner. He may arrive thirty minutes late, or leave
before the dinner is half over. A Quartermaster-General will leave the
War Office an hour earlier, because he has promised to go bicycling with
some young people, and an Editor will leave his paper and accompany his
wife to a tea.

[Illustration: _After Dinner_]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: _At Dinner_]

This interest in all things gives English people time for everything.

A London reception is bright and amusing. In the early part of the
evening statesmen, diplomats, and older people are in the majority; at
eleven o’clock those who have been to the play arrive, and a little
later the actors themselves. From the staircase people can best be seen.
It is always crowded by those who are on their way to pay respects to
the hostess in the hall above, and by those who have already done so and
are on their way down to the supper-room. Above and below a dense crowd
elbow and talk around and through you. You are slowly twisted past your
hostess and through the parlors, and then finally back to the staircase,
down which you can go as slowly as you please. No one is in a hurry--so
out into the early morning, between rows of uniformed coachmen standing
like sentries sleeping on their post.

[Illustration: _Your Hostess_]



LONDON PEOPLE


ONCE upon a time, judging by John Leech’s pictures of English women (who
could do almost everything in those days but manage their hoop-skirts),
they were all short and became instantly stout when they arrived at
forty. If Leech was right, English women must have changed very much
since then. It may be that they grew tall to more closely resemble Du
Maurier’s goddesses. In many cases they have succeeded, as may be seen
at Lord’s or at any fashionable race-course. There may not be a variety
of good looks, but one type is very beautiful. So strong is the family
likeness, they might all be handsome sisters. There was something very
sweet and lovable about that plump little woman of Mr. Leech’s. I only
met her in reality after she had grown into a sweet old lady, and I
should have regretted not having seen her before had I not seen her tall
granddaughters.

[Illustration: _Patiently Listening_]

The fact that Phil May is a prophet in his own country should alone
clear Englishmen of the suspicion that they are slow to see fun. On an
Englishman’s love of fair play and good sport no suspicion has ever
rested. It is the most attractive thing about him, and it is only
natural that the greatest assortment of good-natured people are to be
found at the Derby. I had already met them in May’s drawings, and I was
prepared to find the good-nature contagious. Last year a party on a
coach opposite the Royal box and a policeman, who looked after that
particular part of the course, drank champagne out of the same bottle.
When the Prince of Wales came down to lead Persimmon off the track,
short men stood on boxes and balanced themselves by holding on to
whoever stood next to them. Gypsy fortune-tellers and painted-faced
minstrels climbed on the backs of coaches. Everyone shouted together and
probably wished that the Prince had been a little taller, so that they
might all have seen him.

[Illustration: _At the Savoy_]

[Illustration: _Phil May_]

[Illustration: _George du Maurier_]

English-speaking people have been introduced to each other by a long
line of clever draughtsmen. They have laughed together about the same
people in the truest and sweetest-natured way in all the world. Above
all others, one hand awakened the interest resulting in people knowing
themselves and others better. The beautiful was safe in that gentle
hand. Although the heart that guided it no longer beats, the human
interest and kindly feeling that it awakened will live forever, and all
the world has placed among the foremost men of his day the
affectionately remembered name of George Du Maurier.

These drawings were made among the most hospitable people I ever met.
When I have failed, it has not been owing to a lack of interest, but
more likely on account of a consciousness that my results would fall
short of my desires. The disappointments following the completion of a
drawing made from a beautiful woman are many. In these portraits I have
the most to regret.

[Illustration: _The Queen_]

[Illustration]





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "London as seen by Charles Dana Gibson" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.