Chapter Chapter 6 · London

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The next day I returned to the hall, and asking once more to see the

housekeeper, I communicated to her my plan.

Mrs. Barrett was a grave, judicious woman, though she knew little more

of the world than myself; but grave and judicious as she was, she did

not charge me with being out of my senses; and, indeed, I had a staid

manner of my own which ere now had been as good to me as cloak and hood

of hodden grey, since under its favour I had been enabled to achieve

with impunity, and even approbation, deeds that, if attempted with an

excited and unsettled air, would in some minds have stamped me as a

dreamer and zealot.

The housekeeper was slowly propounding some difficulties, while she

prepared orange-rind for marmalade, when a child ran past the window

and came bounding into the room. It was a pretty child, and as it

danced, laughing, up to me—for we were not strangers (nor, indeed, was

its mother—a young married daughter of the house—a stranger)—I took it

on my knee.

Different as were our social positions now, this child’s mother and I

had been schoolfellows, when I was a girl of ten and she a young lady

of sixteen; and I remembered her, good-looking, but dull, in a lower

class than mine.

I was admiring the boy’s handsome dark eyes, when the mother, young

Mrs. Leigh, entered. What a beautiful and kind-looking woman was the

good-natured and comely, but unintellectual, girl become! Wifehood and

maternity had changed her thus, as I have since seen them change others

even less promising than she. Me she had forgotten. I was changed too,

though not, I fear, for the better. I made no attempt to recall myself

to her memory; why should I? She came for her son to accompany her in a

walk, and behind her followed a nurse, carrying an infant. I only

mention the incident because, in addressing the nurse, Mrs. Leigh spoke

French (very bad French, by the way, and with an incorrigibly bad

accent, again forcibly reminding me of our school-days): and I found

the woman was a foreigner. The little boy chattered volubly in French

too. When the whole party were withdrawn, Mrs. Barrett remarked that

her young lady had brought that foreign nurse home with her two years

ago, on her return from a Continental excursion; that she was treated

almost as well as a governess, and had nothing to do but walk out with

the baby and chatter French with Master Charles; “and,” added Mrs.

Barrett, “she says there are many Englishwomen in foreign families as

well placed as she.”

I stored up this piece of casual information, as careful housewives

store seemingly worthless shreds and fragments for which their

prescient minds anticipate a possible use some day. Before I left my

old friend, she gave me the address of a respectable old-fashioned inn

in the City, which, she said, my uncles used to frequent in former

days.

In going to London, I ran less risk and evinced less enterprise than

the reader may think. In fact, the distance was only fifty miles. My

means would suffice both to take me there, to keep me a few days, and

also to bring me back if I found no inducement to stay. I regarded it

as a brief holiday, permitted for once to work-weary faculties, rather

than as an adventure of life and death. There is nothing like taking

all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil;

whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.

Fifty miles were then a day’s journey (for I speak of a time gone by:

my hair, which, till a late period, withstood the frosts of time, lies

now, at last white, under a white cap, like snow beneath snow). About

nine o’clock of a wet February night I reached London.

My reader, I know, is one who would not thank me for an elaborate

reproduction of poetic first impressions; and it is well, inasmuch as I

had neither time nor mood to cherish such; arriving as I did late, on a

dark, raw, and rainy evening, in a Babylon and a wilderness, of which

the vastness and the strangeness tried to the utmost any powers of

clear thought and steady self-possession with which, in the absence of

more brilliant faculties, Nature might have gifted me.

When I left the coach, the strange speech of the cabmen and others

waiting round, seemed to me odd as a foreign tongue. I had never before

heard the English language chopped up in that way. However, I managed

to understand and to be understood, so far as to get myself and trunk

safely conveyed to the old inn whereof I had the address. How

difficult, how oppressive, how puzzling seemed my flight! In London for

the first time; at an inn for the first time; tired with travelling;

confused with darkness; palsied with cold; unfurnished with either

experience or advice to tell me how to act, and yet—to act obliged.

Into the hands of common sense I confided the matter. Common sense,

however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and

it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she

spasmodically executed her trust. Thus urged, she paid the porter:

considering the crisis, I did not blame her too much that she was

hugely cheated; she asked the waiter for a room; she timorously called

for the chambermaid; what is far more, she bore, without being wholly

overcome, a highly supercilious style of demeanour from that young

lady, when she appeared.

I recollect this same chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and

smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they

had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its

mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce

attire flaunted an easy scorn to my plain country garb.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” I thought, “and then the scene is new, and

the circumstances; I shall gain good.”

Maintaining a very quiet manner towards this arrogant little maid, and

subsequently observing the same towards the parsonic-looking,

black-coated, white-neckclothed waiter, I got civility from them ere

long. I believe at first they thought I was a servant; but in a little

while they changed their minds, and hovered in a doubtful state between

patronage and politeness.

I kept up well till I had partaken of some refreshment, warmed myself

by a fire, and was fairly shut into my own room; but, as I sat down by

the bed and rested my head and arms on the pillow, a terrible

oppression overcame me. All at once my position rose on me like a

ghost. Anomalous, desolate, almost blank of hope it stood. What was I

doing here alone in great London? What should I do on the morrow? What

prospects had I in life? What friends had I on earth? Whence did I

come? Whither should I go? What should I do?

I wet the pillow, my arms, and my hair, with rushing tears. A dark

interval of most bitter thought followed this burst; but I did not

regret the step taken, nor wish to retract it. A strong, vague

persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I

_could_ go forward—that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in

time open—predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them

so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say

my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and

lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At

first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the

twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: “I lie in the shadow

of St. Paul’s.”

CHAPTER 6. London

LONDON.

The next day was the first of March, and when I awoke, rose, and opened

my curtain, I saw the risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head,

above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a

solemn, orbed mass, dark blue and dim—THE DOME. While I looked, my

inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose;

I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last

about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s

gourd.

“I did well to come,” I said, proceeding to dress with speed and care.

“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but

a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his

faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”

Being dressed, I went down; not travel-worn and exhausted, but tidy and

refreshed. When the waiter came in with my breakfast, I managed to

accost him sedately, yet cheerfully; we had ten minutes’ discourse, in

the course of which we became usefully known to each other.

He was a grey-haired, elderly man; and, it seemed, had lived in his

present place twenty years. Having ascertained this, I was sure he must

remember my two uncles, Charles and Wilmot, who, fifteen, years ago,

were frequent visitors here. I mentioned their names; he recalled them

perfectly, and with respect. Having intimated my connection, my

position in his eyes was henceforth clear, and on a right footing. He

said I was like my uncle Charles: I suppose he spoke truth, because

Mrs. Barrett was accustomed to say the same thing. A ready and obliging

courtesy now replaced his former uncomfortably doubtful manner;

henceforth I need no longer be at a loss for a civil answer to a

sensible question.

The street on which my little sitting-room window looked was narrow,

perfectly quiet, and not dirty: the few passengers were just such as

one sees in provincial towns: here was nothing formidable; I felt sure

I might venture out alone.

Having breakfasted, out I went. Elation and pleasure were in my heart:

to walk alone in London seemed of itself an adventure. Presently I

found myself in Paternoster Row—classic ground this. I entered a

bookseller’s shop, kept by one Jones: I bought a little book—a piece of

extravagance I could ill afford; but I thought I would one day give or

send it to Mrs. Barrett. Mr. Jones, a dried-in man of business, stood

behind his desk: he seemed one of the greatest, and I one of the

happiest of beings.

Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. Finding myself

before St. Paul’s, I went in; I mounted to the dome: I saw thence

London, with its river, and its bridges, and its churches; I saw

antique Westminster, and the green Temple Gardens, with sun upon them,

and a glad, blue sky, of early spring above; and between them and it,

not too dense, a cloud of haze.

Descending, I went wandering whither chance might lead, in a still

ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment; and I got—I know not how—I got into

the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at last: I got into the

Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I

dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone,

gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days,

I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the

city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business,

its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The

city is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At

the West End you may be amused, but in the city you are deeply excited.

Faint, at last, and hungry (it was years since I had felt such healthy

hunger), I returned, about two o’clock, to my dark, old, and quiet inn.

I dined on two dishes—a plain joint and vegetables; both seemed

excellent: how much better than the small, dainty messes Miss

Marchmont’s cook used to send up to my kind, dead mistress and me, and

to the discussion of which we could not bring half an appetite between

us! Delightfully tired, I lay down, on three chairs for an hour (the

room did not boast a sofa). I slept, then I woke and thought for two

hours.

My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now

such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and

daring—perhaps desperate—line of action. I had nothing to lose.

Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I

failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would

suffer? If I died far away from—home, I was going to say, but I had no

home—from England, then, who would weep?

I might suffer; I was inured to suffering: death itself had not, I

thought, those terrors for me which it has for the softly reared. I

had, ere this, looked on the thought of death with a quiet eye.

Prepared, then, for any consequences, I formed a project.

That same evening I obtained from my friend, the waiter, information

respecting, the sailing of vessels for a certain continental port,

Boue-Marine. No time, I found, was to be lost: that very night I must

take my berth. I might, indeed, have waited till the morning before

going on board, but would not run the risk of being too late.

“Better take your berth at once, ma’am,” counselled the waiter. I

agreed with him, and having discharged my bill, and acknowledged my

friend’s services at a rate which I now know was princely, and which in

his eyes must have seemed absurd—and indeed, while pocketing the cash,

he smiled a faint smile which intimated his opinion of the donor’s

_savoir-faire_—he proceeded to call a coach. To the driver he also

recommended me, giving at the same time an injunction about taking me,

I think, to the wharf, and not leaving me to the watermen; which that

functionary promised to observe, but failed in keeping his promise: on

the contrary, he offered me up as an oblation, served me as a dripping

roast, making me alight in the midst of a throng of watermen.

This was an uncomfortable crisis. It was a dark night. The coachman

instantly drove off as soon as he had got his fare: the watermen

commenced a struggle for me and my trunk. Their oaths I hear at this

moment: they shook my philosophy more than did the night, or the

isolation, or the strangeness of the scene. One laid hands on my trunk.

I looked on and waited quietly; but when another laid hands on me, I

spoke up, shook off his touch, stepped at once into a boat, desired

austerely that the trunk should be placed beside me—“Just there,”—which

was instantly done; for the owner of the boat I had chosen became now

an ally: I was rowed off.

Black was the river as a torrent of ink; lights glanced on it from the

piles of building round, ships rocked on its bosom. They rowed me up to

several vessels; I read by lantern-light their names painted in great

white letters on a dark ground. “The Ocean,” “The Phoenix,” “The

Consort,” “The Dolphin,” were passed in turns; but “The Vivid” was my

ship, and it seemed she lay further down.

Down the sable flood we glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon

rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange

scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds

dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose

insane oaths still tortured my ear, I asked myself if I was wretched or

terrified. I was neither. Often in my life have I been far more so

under comparatively safe circumstances. “How is this?” said I.

“Methinks I am animated and alert, instead of being depressed and

apprehensive?” I could not tell how it was.

“THE VIVID” started out, white and glaring, from the black night at

last.—“Here you are!” said the waterman, and instantly demanded six

shillings.

“You ask too much,” I said. He drew off from the vessel and swore he

would not embark me till I paid it. A young man, the steward as I found

afterwards, was looking over the ship’s side; he grinned a smile in

anticipation of the coming contest; to disappoint him, I paid the

money. Three times that afternoon I had given crowns where I should

have given shillings; but I consoled myself with the reflection, “It is

the price of experience.”

“They’ve cheated you!” said the steward exultingly when I got on board.

I answered phlegmatically that “I knew it,” and went below.

A stout, handsome, and showy woman was in the ladies’ cabin. I asked to

be shown my berth; she looked hard at me, muttered something about its

being unusual for passengers to come on board at that hour, and seemed

disposed to be less than civil. What a face she had—so comely—so

insolent and so selfish!

“Now that I am on board, I shall certainly stay here,” was my answer.

“I will trouble you to show me my berth.”

She complied, but sullenly. I took off my bonnet, arranged my things,

and lay down. Some difficulties had been passed through; a sort of

victory was won: my homeless, anchorless, unsupported mind had again

leisure for a brief repose. Till the “Vivid” arrived in harbour, no

further action would be required of me; but then…. Oh! I could not look

forward. Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half-trance.

The stewardess talked all night; not to me but to the young steward,

her son and her very picture. He passed in and out of the cabin

continually: they disputed, they quarrelled, they made it up again

twenty times in the course of the night. She professed to be writing a

letter home—she said to her father; she read passages of it aloud,

heeding me no more than a stock—perhaps she believed me asleep. Several

of these passages appeared to comprise family secrets, and bore special

reference to one “Charlotte,” a younger sister who, from the bearing of

the epistle, seemed to be on the brink of perpetrating a romantic and

imprudent match; loud was the protest of this elder lady against the

distasteful union. The dutiful son laughed his mother’s correspondence

to scorn. She defended it, and raved at him. They were a strange pair.

She might be thirty-nine or forty, and was buxom and blooming as a girl

of twenty. Hard, loud, vain and vulgar, her mind and body alike seemed

brazen and imperishable. I should think, from her childhood, she must

have lived in public stations; and in her youth might very likely have

been a barmaid.

Towards morning her discourse ran on a new theme: “the Watsons,” a

certain expected family-party of passengers, known to her, it appeared,

and by her much esteemed on account of the handsome profit realized in

their fees. She said, “It was as good as a little fortune to her

whenever this family crossed.”

At dawn all were astir, and by sunrise the passengers came on board.

Boisterous was the welcome given by the stewardess to the “Watsons,”

and great was the bustle made in their honour. They were four in

number, two males and two females. Besides them, there was but one

other passenger—a young lady, whom a gentlemanly, though

languid-looking man escorted. The two groups offered a marked contrast.

The Watsons were doubtless rich people, for they had the confidence of

conscious wealth in their bearing; the women—youthful both of them, and

one perfectly handsome, as far as physical beauty went—were dressed

richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character for the circumstances.

Their bonnets with bright flowers, their velvet cloaks and silk

dresses, seemed better suited for park or promenade than for a damp

packet deck. The men were of low stature, plain, fat, and vulgar; the

oldest, plainest, greasiest, broadest, I soon found was the husband—the

bridegroom I suppose, for she was very young—of the beautiful girl.

Deep was my amazement at this discovery; and deeper still when I

perceived that, instead of being desperately wretched in such a union,

she was gay even to giddiness. “Her laughter,” I reflected, “must be

the mere frenzy of despair.” And even while this thought was crossing

my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and solitary against the ship’s side,

she came tripping up to me, an utter stranger, with a camp-stool in her

hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity puzzled and startled me,

though it showed a perfect set of perfect teeth, she offered me the

accommodation of this piece of furniture. I declined it of course, with

all the courtesy I could put into my manner; she danced off heedless

and lightsome. She must have been good-natured; but what had made her

marry that individual, who was at least as much like an oil-barrel as a

man?

The other lady passenger, with the gentleman-companion, was quite a

girl, pretty and fair: her simple print dress, untrimmed straw-bonnet

and large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain to quakerism:

yet, for her, becoming enough. Before the gentleman quitted her, I

observed him throwing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as

if to ascertain in what company his charge would be left. With a most

dissatisfied air did his eye turn from the ladies with the gay flowers;

he looked at me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or whatever

she was: she also glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her

short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely

mourning habit, that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both.

A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father)

kissed her, and returned to land. The packet sailed.

Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to

travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of

English parents and guardians. As for the “jeunes Meess,” by some their

intrepidity is pronounced masculine and “inconvenant,” others regard

them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system

which wantonly dispenses with proper “surveillance.” Whether this

particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left

unwatched, I do not know: or, rather did not _then_ know; but it soon

appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced

the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little

sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears

which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and

spoke.

“Are you fond of a sea-voyage?” was her question.

I explained that my _fondness_ for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the

test of experience; I had never made one.

“Oh, how charming!” cried she. “I quite envy you the novelty: first

impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I

quite forget the first: I am quite _blasée_ about the sea and all

that.”

I could not help smiling.

“Why do you laugh at me?” she inquired, with a frank testiness that

pleased me better than her other talk.

“Because you are so young to be _blasée_ about anything.”

“I am seventeen” (a little piqued).

“You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?”

“Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times,

alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make

friends.”

“You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think” (glancing at

the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of

noise on deck).

“Not of those odious men and women,” said she: “such people should be

steerage passengers. Are you going to school?”

“No.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have not the least idea—beyond, at least, the port of Boue-Marine.”

She stared, then carelessly ran on:

“I am going to school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at

in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing—nothing in

the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and

French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can’t read or write

them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an

easy German book into English the other day, and I couldn’t do it. Papa

was so mortified: he says it looks as if M. de Bassompierre—my godpapa,

who pays all my school-bills—had thrown away all his money. And then,

in matters of information—in history, geography, arithmetic, and so on,

I am quite a baby; and I write English so badly—such spelling and

grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have quite forgotten my

religion; they call me a Protestant, you know, but really I am not sure

whether I am one or not: I don’t well know the difference between

Romanism and Protestantism. However, I don’t in the least care for

that. I was a Lutheran once at Bonn—dear Bonn!—charming Bonn!—where

there were so many handsome students. Every nice girl in our school had

an admirer; they knew our hours for walking out, and almost always

passed us on the promenade: ‘Schönes Mädchen,’ we used to hear them

say. I was excessively happy at Bonn!”

“And where are you now?” I inquired.

“Oh! at—_chose_,” said she.

Now, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe (such was this young person’s name) only

substituted this word “_chose_” in temporary oblivion of the real name.

It was a habit she had: “_chose_” came in at every turn in her

conversation—the convenient substitute for any missing word in any

language she might chance at the time to be speaking. French girls

often do the like; from them she had caught the custom. “_Chose_,”

however, I found in this instance, stood for V