Chap. VIII Sunlight — Moonlight — Gaslight
The Sun and the Londoners — Mysteries of the Fog — Harvest Moons — Gas — How the Climate Works — Flannels — English Dinners and French Theatricals — Current Phrases
Fashionable novelists, no matter whether their productions end with marriage or suicide, devote their first chapters to geographical and ethnographical accounts of the country or province in which they lay their plots. Scientific travellers devote the first pages of their heavy and immortal works to the respective telluria and astronomic peculiarities of the country they propose to describe. To my sincere regret, I have not, in my unsystematic wanderings through London, been able to follow so laudable an example; for it requires a long residence and a good deal of careful observation to understand the whims of the London celestial bodies—their goings and comings—and their influence on vegetable and animal life—on the strata of the atmosphere and of mankind.
Since Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, and Lola Montes into a Countess of Landsfeld, there has not, as far as I know, been any female being so much abused as the London sun;D but the reasons of such abuse are diametrically opposed. The two first named ladies were found fault with because they saw too much of the world, while the London sun is justly charged with a want of curiosity. It turns its back upon the wealthiest city in Christendom; and, in the presence of the most splendid capital of Europe, it insists on remaining veiled in steam, fog, and smoke.
The London sun, like unto German liberty, exists in the minds of the people, who have faith in either, and believe that either might be bright, dazzling, and glorious, were it not for the intervention of a dark, ugly fog, between the upper and nether regions. It happens, just now, that we have not seen the sun for the last three weeks. But for the aid of astronomy, which tells us that the sun is still in its old place, we might be tempted to believe that it had gone out of town for the long vacation; or that it had been adjourned by some continental constitutional government; or that it was being kept in a German capital, waiting for the birthday of the reigning prince, when it must come out in a blaze; for this, I understand, has been the sun’s duty from time immemorial. A three weeks’ absence of the sun would make a great stir in any other town. The Catholics would trace its cause to the infidelity of the age; the Protestants would demonstrate that the sun had been scared away by certain late acts of Papal aggression; and the Jews would lament and ask: “How is it possible the sun can shine when the Bank raises its rate of discount?” But the Londoners care as little for a month of chiaro-oscuro as the Laplanders do. They are used to it.
Twice in the course of the last week—for an essayist on astronomical matters ought to be conscientious—twice did the sun appear for a few minutes. It was late in the afternoon, and it looked out from the west, just above Regent’s-park, where the largest menagerie in the world may be seen for one shilling, and, on Mondays, for sixpence. All the animals, from the hippopotamus down to the beaver, left their huts, where they were at vespers, and stared at the sun, and wished it good morning. It was a solemn moment! An impertinent monkey alone shaded his eyes with his hands, and asked the sun where it came from, and whether there was not some mistake somewhere? And the sun blushed and hid its face beneath a big cloud. The monkey laughed and jeered, and the tigers roared, and the turtle-doves said such conduct was shocking and altogether ungentlemanly. The owl alone was happy, and said it was; for it had been almost blind during the last five minutes; “and that,” as he said, “was a thing it had not been used to in London.”
But whatever ill-natured remarks we and others may make on the London sun, they apply only to the winter months. May and September shame us into silence. In those months, the sun in London is as lovely, genial, and—I must go the length of a trope—sunny as anywhere in Germany; with this difference only, that it is not so glowing—not so consistent. In the country, too, it comes out in full, broad, and traditional glory. Its favourite spots are in the South of England—Bristol, Bath, Hastings, and the Isle of Wight. In those favored regions, the mild breeze of summer blows even late in the year; the hedges and trees stand resplendent with the freshness of their foliage; the meadows are green, and lovely to behold; the butterflies hover over the blossoms of the honeysuckle; the cedar from Lebanon grows there and thrives, and myrtles and fuchsias, Hortensias and roses, and passion-flowers, surround the charming villas on the sea-shore. Village churches are covered with ivy up to the very roof; gigantic fern moves in the sea-breeze; the birds sing in the branches of the wild laurel tree; cattle and sheep graze on the downs; and grown-up persons and children bathe in the open sea, while the German rivers are sending down their first shoals of ice, and dense fogs welter in the streets of London.
Here is one of the vulgar errors and popular delusions of the Continent. People confound the climate of London with the climate of England; they talk of the isles of mist in the West of Europe. A very poetical idea that, but as untrue as poetical. Many parts of these islands are as clear and sunny as any of the inland countries of the Continent.
The winter-fogs of London are, indeed, awful. They surpass all imagining; he who never saw them, can form no idea of what they are. He who knows how powerfully they affect the minds and tempers of men, can understand the prevalence of that national disease—the spleen. In a fog, the air is hardly fit for breathing; it is grey-yellow, of a deep orange, and even black; at the same time, it is moist, thick, full of bad smells, and choking. The fog appears, now and then, slowly, like a melodramatic ghost, and sometimes it sweeps over the town as the simoom over the desert. At times, it is spread with equal density over the whole of that ocean of houses on other occasions, it meets with some invisible obstacle, and rolls itself into intensely dense masses, from which the passengers come forth in the manner of the student who came out of the cloud to astonish Dr. Faust. It is hardly necessary to mention, that the fog is worst in those parts of the town which are near the Thames.
When the sun has set in London (the curious in this respect, will do well to consult the Almanack), and when the weather is tolerably clear, the moon appears to govern the night. The moon is a more regular guest in London than the sun; and the example of these celestial bodies is followed by the great journals, the issue of the evening papers being much more regular than that of the morning papers. The London moon is, after all, not very different from the moon in Germany. It is quite as pale and romantic; it is the confidant of lovesick maidens and adventurous pickpockets.
Traveller from the Continent, enjoy the London moon with method and reason! If heaven favored you by sending you into the street on a beautiful, splendid, transparent, moonlit night, in which the shades of Ossian and Mignon sit by the rivers or under the limetrees, while all the poetry you smuggled from your native land awakes in your heart: traveller, if such good fortune is yours, why, then, the best thing you can do, is to go to the Italian opera, for the moonlit nights of this country are as treacherous as its politics. They seem all calm and peaceful; but they are rife with colds and ague. They are most beautiful, but also most dangerous. Every Englishman will tell you as much, and advise you to increase your stock of flannel in proportion to the beauty of the night.
Most regular and reliable is a third medium for the lighting-up of London—the gas. The sun and moon may be behind their time, but the gas is always at its post. And in winter, it happens sometimes that it does service all day long. Its only drawback is, that it cannot be had gratis, like the light from the sun, moon, and stars; but the same inconveniences attend the gas on the Continent, and after all, it is cheaper in England than anywhere else. The Germans are mere tyros in the consumption of gas. The stairs of every decent London house, have generally quite as much light as a German shop, and the London shops are more strongly lighted up than the German theatres. Butchers, and such-like tradesmen, especially in the smaller streets, burn the gas from one-inch tubes, that John Bull, in purchasing his piece of mutton or beef, may see each vein, each sinew, and each lump of fat. The smaller streets and the markets, are literally inundated with gaslight especially on Saturday evenings. No city on the Continent offers such a sight. In the apothecary’s shops, the light is placed at the back of gigantic glass bottles, filled with coloured liquid, so that from a distance you see it in the most magnificent colour. The arrangement is convenient for those who are in search of such a shop, and it gives the long and broad streets of London a strange and picturesque appearance.
We have said so much of the climate, that it is high time to add a few words about its results. What then are the effects of the London winters, of the gloomy foggy days, the cold rainy nights, and of the changeable English weather? The Continent knows those results partly from hearsay. They manifest themselves in the character, in the ways, the dress, and the social arrangements of the English.
The British isles rear a strong healthy race of men and women, beyond any other country in Europe. The lower classes have muscles and sinews which enable them to rival their cattle in feats of strength. The women are stately and tall; the children full of rosy health. The middle classes live better, though on an average less luxuriously than the corresponding classes on the continent. Their food is strong and nourishing; it is at once converted into flesh and blood. The British farmers are specimens of human mammoths, however grievously they may complain of their distress since the abolition of the duty on corn. The nobility and gentry pass a considerable part of the year at their country seats. They hunt, fish, and shoot, to the manifest advantage of their health. The very children, mounted on shaggy ponies, take long rides; so do the women, who even now and then follow the hounds. They go out in yachts on the stormy channel and extend their excursions to the coasts of Italy and the West Indian islands. But in despite of this mode of life, which is conducive to health, they pay their tribute to the moist atmosphere of their island, and they all—men, women, and children—submit to pass their lives in flannel wrappers.
“We want,” says Sir John, “to be independent of the changes of the weather; and we isolate our bodies by means of suitable articles of dress. We wear flannel, cottons, india-rubber, and gutta percha; we drink cognac, port, stout; we eat strong meats with strong spices. We never pretend that the climate is to suit us; we suit ourselves to the climate. The Continentals act on a different principle, and say they like the result. We like the result of our own principle, and that’s the reason why we stick to it.”
Flannels in summer and in winter, in Glasgow and in Jamaica; this is one of the ten commandments which few Englishmen care to transgress. But their conservative tendencies which cause them to cling to the habits in which they were reared, lead them into the absurdity of adhering to an English mode of life even when fate or trade have flung them to the furthermost corners of the earth. I understand that English drawing-rooms at Gibraltar are as carefully carpeted as the drawing-rooms of London and Edinburgh. The British drink their port and sherry under the torrid zone; their porter and stout follow them to the foot of the Himalaya. And they do all this, not because they cannot be comfortable without their old habits; but because they protest and devoutly believe, that in all the various climates the English mode of living is most conducive to health.
The proper cultivation of the body is a matter of great importance in England. A French labourer is happy with the most frugal dinner, if, in the evening, he can but afford to take a place and laugh or weep at a vaudeville theatre. The Englishman wants meat, good meat, and plenty of it. The lower classes care little or nothing for “the feast of the soul.” John Bull laughs at the starvelings, the French frog-eaters. He has no idea that the French ouvrier is, after all, a more civilised creature than he is, exactly because to the Frenchman his Sunday dinner is not, as is the case with the lower classes of the English, the most important part of the Sunday.
These material tendencies are, of course, fostered by education and society. Originally they result from the climate. The frugality of the Paris ouvrier could not, for any length of time, resist the stomach-inspiriting effect of a fresh sea-breeze.
“A beautiful morning, Sir.” “A splendid day, Sir.” Such-like phrases are stereotyped formulas for the proper commencement of an acquaintanceship. The English are so accustomed to these meteorological remarks, and these remarks appear so important (because everybody and everything here depends upon the weather), that they rarely, if ever, neglect making them.
“Very pleasant weather, Sir;” or, “Very wet to-day,” mutters the cabman as he shuts the door upon you. The same remarks greet you from the lips of the omnibus-driver as you take your seat at his side, or from those of the shopwoman, as a preliminary to that awful “Any other article, Sir?” And the words are always pronounced in that grave, monotonous, business tone which is peculiar to the English even in treating of the most important subjects. It may be sunshine or rain, the tone is always the same. And it has been surmised, that the English residents on the continent are such egregious bores and bears only because the greater constancy of the weather deprives them of those magic formulas, without which they cannot open their minds. How, indeed, is it possible to make the acquaintance of any one unless there is rain, storm, fog, and sunshine at least twice in the course of the four and twenty hours?
Notes
D The sun—die Sonne—is feminine in German.