these fragmentary recollections of our childish days may have served to suggest some hints of the changes which have made the london of the present day almost—perhaps quite—as different from the london of the second decade of this century as the latter was from “the town” in the days of george the first. but it is difficult for middle-aged people of the present day to form any vivid and sufficient conception of the greatness of them. of course the mere material ameliorations and extensions have so metamorphosed the localities that i, on returning after long years to the london i once knew, topographically at least, so well, find myself in a new town of which the geography is in some parts strange to me, with just so much of the old landmarks remaining as serves to suggest false clues to the labyrinth and render the matter more puzzling. but the changes in ways and habits and modes of living and feeling and thinking are still greater and of much more profound significance.
to say that there were in those days no omnibuses and no cabs, and of course no railways, either{29} under ground or over it, is a simple matter, and very easily stated. but it is not easy to picture to oneself the whole meaning and consequences of their non-existence. let any londoner, with the exception of the comparatively small number of those who use carriages of their own, think what his life would be, and the transaction of his day’s work or of his day’s pleasure, without any means of locomotion save his own legs or a hackney coach, which, at a cost of about five times the cab hire of the present day, used to shut him up in an atmosphere like that of a very dirty stable, and jolt him over the uneven pavement at a pace of about four miles an hour. dickens has given in his own graphic way more than one sketch of the old hackney coach. i do not think that i ever saw a hackney coach that had been built for the work it was engaged in as such. they were heavy, old-fashioned, rickety vehicles, which had become too heavy, too old-fashioned, too rickety to be retained in the service of the families to which they had once belonged. they were built for the most part with hammer cloths, and many of them exhibited huge and gorgeously-painted armorial bearings on the panels. (by the by, why did not the officials of the inland revenue come down on the proprietors of these venerable vehicles for the use of armorial bearings? i take it that the march of modern intelligence, acuens mortalia corda, would impel their successors of the present day to do so.) the drivers of those carriages were “in a concatenation accordingly{30}”—shabby, slow, stupid, dirty, and often muddled with drink. we hear occasionally nowadays of a cabman “driving furiously” when drunk. the wording of the charge smacks of another era. not all the gin in london could have stimulated the old “jarvey” to drive his skeletons of horses furiously. he was not often incapacitated by drink, but very frequently muddled. if it was necessary for him to descend from his hammer-cloth for the purpose of opening the door of his carriage, which the presence of the “waterman” of the stand for the most part rendered unnecessary, he was a long time about it, and a longer in clambering back to his seat, loaded as he generally was in all weathers with an immense greatcoat of many capes, weatherbeaten out of all resemblance to its original colour. the “watermen,” so-called, as we know from high authority, “because they opens the coach doors,” were nevertheless surrounded by their half-a-dozen or so of little shallow pails of water, as they stood by the side of the curbstone near a coach stand. they were to the hackney-coachman what the bricklayer’s labourer is to the bricklayer. and a more sorry sight can hardly be conceived than the “stand” with its broken-down carriages, more broken-down drivers, and most of all broken-down horses, which supplied us in the days when we “called a coach, and let a coach be called, and he that calls it, let him be the caller,” as it stands written in a page almost as much (but far less deservedly) forgotten as the hackney coach.
already in my boyhood “oxford road” was{31} beginning to be called “oxford street.” but my father and his contemporaries always used the former phrase. at the end of oxford street was tyburn turnpike; not a mere name, but a veritable barrier closing not only the continuation of the oxford road but also the edgware road, turning at right angles to the north of it. and there stood one turnpike-man to receive the toll and give tickets in return for the whole of the oxford street traffic! i can see him now, with his low-crowned hat, a straw in his mouth, his vigilant eye, and the preternatural quickness and coolness, as it seemed to me, with which, standing in the centre between his two gates, he took the halfpence and delivered the tickets. he had always an irreproachably clean white apron with pockets in the front of it, one for halfpence and one for tickets.
i have spoken of my delight in the spectacle of the coaches starting from and arriving at the white horse cellar in piccadilly. but there were many other aspects of london life in the days before railroads in which the coaches made a leading feature. one of the sights of london for country cousins was to see the mails starting at 8 p.m. from the post office. to view it under the most favourable circumstances, one went there on the anniversary of the king’s birthday, when all the guards had their scarlet coats new, and the horses’ heads were all decked with flowers. and truly the yard around the post office offered on such an occasion a prettier sight than all the travelling arrangements of the{32} present day could supply. of course i am speaking of a time a little subsequent to my earliest recollections. for i can remember when the huge edifice in saint martin’s le grand was built; and remember well, too, the ridicule and the outcry that was raised at the size of the building, so enormously larger, it was supposed, than could possibly be needed! but it has now long since been found altogether insufficient for the needs of the service.
a journey on the box of the mail was a great delight to me in those days—days somewhere in the third decade of the century; and faith! i believe would be still, if there were any mails available for the purpose. one journey frequently performed by me with infinite delight was to exeter. my business was to visit two old ladies living there, miss mary and miss fanny bent. the rev. john bent, rector of crediton, had married the sister of my grandmother, the rev. william milton’s wife. miss mary bent was his daughter by a second wife; but her half-sister, fanny bent, as we and everybody else called her, was thus my mother’s first cousin, and the tie between fanny milton and fanny bent had always from their earliest years been a very close one.
and that is how i came on several occasions to find myself on the box of the exeter mail. a new and accelerated mail service had been recently established under the title of the “devonport mail.” it was at that time the fastest, i believe, in england. its performances caused somewhat of a{33} sensation in the coaching world, and it was known in those circles as “the quicksilver mail.” its early days had chanced unfortunately to be marked by two or three accidents, which naturally gave it an increased celebrity. and truly, if it is considered what those men and horses were required to perform, the wonder was, not that “the quicksilver” should have come to grief two or three times, but rather that it ever made its journey without doing so. what does the railway traveller of the present day, who sees a travelling post office, and its huge tender crammed with postal matter, think of the idea of carrying all that mass on one, or perhaps two, coaches? the guard, occupying his solitary post behind the coach, on the top of the receptacle called, with reference to the constructions of still earlier days, the hinder boot, sat on a little seat made for one, with his pistols and blunderbuss in a box in front of him. and the original notion of those who first planned the modern mail coach was, that the bags containing the letters should be carried in that “hinder boot.” the “fore boot,” beneath the driver’s box, was considered to be appropriated to the baggage of the three outside and four inside passengers, which was the mail’s entire complement. one of the former shared the box with the driver, and two occupied the seat on the roof behind him. the accommodation provided for these two was not of a very comfortable description. they were not indeed crowded as the four, who occupied a similar position on another coach, often were; but{34} they had a mere board to sit on, whereas the seats on the roof of an ordinary stage coach were provided with cushions. the fares by the mail were always somewhat higher than those by even equally fast, or in some cases faster, coaches; and it seems unreasonable, therefore, that the accommodation should be inferior. i can only suppose that the patrons of “the mail” were understood to be compensated for its material imperfections by the superior dignity of their position. the box seat, however, was well cushioned.
but if the despatches, which it was the mail’s business to carry, could once upon a time be contained in that hinder boot, such had ceased to be the case before my day. the bulk of postal matter which had to be carried was continually and rapidly increasing, and i have often seen as many as nine enormous sacks heaped on the coach roof. the length of these sacks was just sufficient to reach from one side of the coach to the other, and the huge heap of them, three or even four tiers high, was piled to a height which was sufficient to prevent the guard, even when standing, from seeing or communicating with the coachman. if to the consideration of all this the reader will add (if he can) a remembrance of the somersetshire and devonshire roads, over which this top-heavy load had to be carried at about twelve miles an hour, it will not seem strange to him that accidents should have occurred. not that the roads were bad; they were, thanks to macadam, good, hard, and smooth;{35} but the hills are numerous, and in many cases very steep.
but the journey, especially on the box seat, was a very pleasant thing. the whole of the service was so well done, and in every detail so admirable. it need hardly be said that the men selected for the drivers of such a coach were masters of their profession. the work was hard, but the remuneration was very good. there were fewer passengers by the mail to “remember the coachman,” but it was more uniformly full, and somewhat more was expected from a traveller by the mail. it was a beautiful thing to see a splendid team going over their short stage at twelve miles an hour! of course none but good cattle in first-rate condition could do the work. a mot of old mrs. mountain, for many years the well-known proprietress of one of the large coaching inns in london, used to be quoted as having been addressed by her to one of her drivers: “you find whipcord, john, and i’ll find oats!” and, as it used to be said, the measure of the corn supplied to a coach-horse was his stomach.
it was a pretty thing to see the changing of the horses. there stood the fresh team, two on the off side, two on the near side, and the coach was drawn up with the utmost exactitude between them. four ostlers jump to the splinter-bars and loose the traces; the reins have already been thrown down. the driver retains his seat, and within the minute (more than once within fifty seconds by the watch{36} in my hand) the coach is again on its onward journey.
then how welcome was breakfast at an excellent old-world country inn—twenty minutes allowed. the hot tea, after your night’s drive, the fresh cream, butter, eggs, hot toast, and cold beef, and then, with cigar alight, back to the box and off again!
i once witnessed on that road—not quite that road, for the quicksilver took a somewhat different line—the stage of four miles between ilchester and ilminster done in twenty minutes, and a trace broken and mended on the road! the mending was effected by the guard almost before the coach stopped. it is a level bit of road, four miles only for the entire stage, and was performed at a full gallop. that was done by a coach called the telegraph, which was started some years after the quicksilver, to do the distance from exeter to london in the day. we left exeter at 5 a.m., and reached london between nine and ten, with time for both breakfast and dinner on the road. i think the performance of the exeter telegraph was about the ne plus ultra of coach travelling. one man drove fifty miles, and then meeting the other coach on the road, changed from one box to the other and drove back again. it was tremendously hard work! i once remarked to him as i sat beside him, that there was not much work for his whip arm. “not much, sir,” he replied; “but just put your hand on my left arm!” i did, and felt the muscle swollen{37} to its utmost, and hard as iron. “many people think,” he said, “that it is easier work to drive such a coach and such a team as this, than to have to flog a dull team up to eight miles an hour. nobody would think so that had ever tried both!”
i once persuaded my mother, who was returning with me from exeter to london, to make the journey on the box of the telegraph, while i sat behind her. she had been a good deal afraid of the experiment, but admitted that she had never enjoyed a journey more.
but having been led by my coaching reminiscences to speak of my visits to exeter and to fanny bent, i must not turn that page of the past without dedicating a few lines to one to whom i had great cause to be gratefully attached, and whose character both in its high worth and its originality and singularity was a product of that day hardly likely to be reproduced in this.
very plain in feature, and dressed with quaker-like simplicity and utter disregard for appearance, her figure was as well known in exeter as the cathedral towers. she held a position and enjoyed an amount of respect which was really singular in the case of a very homely-featured old maid of very small fortune. she affected, like some other persons i have known both in the far west and the far north of england, to speak the dialect of her country. though without any pretension to literary tastes or pursuits, she was a fairly well-read woman, and was perfectly able to speak better english than many{38} a londoner. but she chose when in devonshire to speak as devonshire folks spoke. she was a thoroughgoing churchwoman and conservative, though too universally popular with all classes to confine her sympathies within any party bounds. she had a strong native sense of humour, and despite the traditions and principles which taught her to consider “peter pindar” as a reprobate, she could not resist the enjoyment of his description of the king’s visit to exeter. it was a treat to hear her read the verses in her own devon vernacular. and i shall never forget her whispering to me as we walked up the nave of the cathedral, “nate, nate! clane, clane! do ye mop it, mop it, mister dane?” and how dane buller replied, “in all our ex’ter shops we do not meet with such long mops. our mops don’t reach so high!” i quote possibly incorrectly from the recollections of some sixty years ago; and i have never studied mr. woolcott’s works since. but the very tones of the dear old lady’s voice, as she whispered the words, bursting the while with suppressed laughter, remain in my ears.
a pious churchwoman of these improved days would not, i take it, select such a place and such a time for such whisperings. but i am sure it would be difficult to find a better or more sincere christian than dear old fanny bent. and the anecdote may be accepted as one more illustration of change in manners, feeling, and decencies.
{39}
then there were strawberry and cream parties at a place called, it i remember right, hoopern bowers, always with a bevy of pretty girls, for attracting whom my plain old spinster cousin seemed to possess a special secret; and excursions to marypole head, and drives over haldon down. when i revisited exeter some months ago hoopern bowers seemed to have passed from the memory of man! and whether any one of the laughing girls i had known there was still extant as a grey-headed crone, i could not learn! marypole head too has been nearly swallowed up by the advancing tide of “villas” surging up the hill, though the look-down on the other side over upton pynes and the valley of the exe is lovely as ever. and haldon down at all events is as breezy as of yore!
dr. bowring—subsequently sir john—was at that time resident in exeter with his two daughters. the doctor was hardly likely to be intimate with fanny bent’s conservative and mainly clerical friends, but, knowing everybody, she knew him too, and rather specially liked his girls, who used to be of our hoopern bower parties. lucy bowring was some years my senior, but i remember thinking her very charming; she was a tall, handsome, dark-eyed girl, decidedly clever, and a little more inclined to be emancipée in matters ecclesiastical than were the others of the little world around her. then there was gentle rachel hutchinson! how strangely names that have not been in my mind for half a century or more come back to me! rachel was the daughter of a retired physician, a{40} widower, whom i recognised as a man of elegant and refined culture, somewhat superior to the majority of the local clergy among whom he lived. i can see him now, a slender, somewhat daintily dressed figure, punctiliously courteous, with a pleasant old-world flavour in his manner; with carefully arranged grey hair, double gold eye-glass, a blue swallow-tailed coat, nankin trousers and polished shoes. but he did not come to hoopern bowers. his daughter rachel did; and was curiously contrasted with lucy bowring in every respect. she was a small sylph-like little figure, with blue eyes, blond hair, very pretty and very like an angel. she was also very, very religious after the evangelical fashion of that day, and gave me a volume of low church literature, which i preserved many years with much sentiment, but, i fear, no further profit. i think that the talks which lucy and rachel and i had together over our strawberries and cream must have had some flavour of originality about them. i do not imagine that lucy thought or cared much about my soul; but i fancy that rachel felt herself to be contending for it.
and now, all gone! probably not one of all those who made those little festivities so pleasant to me remains on the face of the earth! at all events every one of them has many many years ago passed out of the circle of light projected by my magic lanthorn!
and how many others have passed like phantasmagoric shadows across that little circle of light!{41} it is one of the results of such a rolling-stone life as mine has been, that the number of persons i have known, and even made friends of for the time, has been immense; but they all pass like a phantom procession! how many! how many! they have trooped on into the outer darkness and been lost!
i suppose that during the half century, or nearly that time—from 1840 to 1886—that i knew little or nothing of england, the change that has come upon all english life has been nearly as great in one part of the country as another. but on visiting exeter a few months ago i was much struck at its altered aspect, because i had known it well in my youth. it was not so much that the new rows of houses and detached villas seemed to have nearly doubled the extent of the city, and obliterated many of the old features of it, as that the character of the population seemed changed. it was less provincial—a term which cockneys naturally use in a disparaging sense, but which in truth implies quite as much that is pleasant, as the reverse. it seemed to have been infected by much of the ways and spirit of london, without of course having anything of the special advantages of london to offer. people no longer walked down the high street along a pavement abundantly ample for the traffic, nodding right and left to acquaintances. everybody knew everybody no longer. the leisurely gossiping ways of the shopkeepers had been exchanged for the short and sharp promptitude of london habits. i recognised indeed the well-remembered tone of the cathedral{42} bells. but the cathedral and its associations and influences did not seem to hold the same place in the city life as it did in the olden time of my young days. there was an impalpable and very indescribable but yet unmistakably sensible something which seemed to shut off the ecclesiastical life on one side of the close precincts from the town life on the other, in a manner which was new to me. i have little doubt that if i had casually asked in any large—say—grocer’s shop in the high street, who was the canon in residence, i should have received a reply indicating that the person inquired of had not an idea of what i was talking about; and am very sure that half a century ago the reply to the same question would have been everywhere a prompt one.
the lovely garden close under the city wall on the northern side,—perhaps the prettiest city garden in england—with its remarkably beautiful view of the cathedral (which used to belong to old edmund granger, an especial crony of fanny bent’s) exists still, somewhat more closely shut in by buildings. we were indeed permitted to walk there the other day by the kindness of the present proprietor, merely as members of “the public,” which would not have been dreamed of in those old days when “the public” was less thought of than at present. but i could not help thinking that “the public” and i, as a portion and representative of it, must be a terrible nuisance to the owner of that beautiful and tranquil spot, so great as seriously to diminish the value of it.{43}
another small difference occurs to me as illustrative of the changes that time and the rail have brought about. i heard very little of the once familiar devonshire dialect. something of intonation there may yet linger, but of the old idioms and phraseology little or nothing.
but i have been beguiled into all these reminiscences of the fair capital of the west and my early days there, by the quicksilver mail, itself a most compendious and almost complete illustration of the nature of the differences between its own day and that of its successor, the rail!
to the rail is due principally much of the changed appearance of london. certainly the domestic architecture of the georgian period has little enough of beauty to recommend it. it is insignificant, mean and prosaic to an extraordinary degree, as we all know. but it is not marked by the audacious, ostentatious, nightmare-hideousness of the railway arches and viaducts and stations of modern london. it is difficult to say whether the greatest change in the daily life and habits of a londoner has been produced by gas, by peel’s police, electric telegraphy, modern postal arrangements, or the underground railway. can the present generation picture to itself what london was and looked like when lighted only by the few twinkling oil lamps which seemed to serve no other purpose save to make darkness visible? can it conceive a london policeless by day, and protected at night only by a few heavily great-coated watchmen, very generally{44} asleep in their “boxes,” and equipped with a huge rattle in one hand and a large stable lanthorn in the other? the twopenny post was considered an immense boon to londoners and their needs of quick communication between the different districts of their even then overgrown town. but what would they have thought of an almost hourly postal delivery, and of the insufficient quickness of that being supplemented by telegraphic messages, to be outstripped in their turn by telephony? and what would the modern londoner think of doing without all these things?
but perhaps the underground railways have most of all revolutionised the london habits of the present day. why, even to me, who knew cabless london, they seem to have become indispensable. i loathe them! the hurry-scurry! the necessity of “looking sharp!” the difficulty of ascertaining which carriage you are to take, and of knowing when you have arrived at your journey’s end! the horrible atmosphere! all strong against the deed! and yet the necessities of time and place in the huge overgrown monster of a town seem to compel me to pass a large portion of my hours among the sewers, when i find myself a dazed and puzzled stranger in the town i once knew so well.
another very striking change in the appearance of london in the jubilee year of queen victoria as contrasted with the london of george the third and the regency, is caused by the preposterous excess of the{45} system of advertising. of course the practice is deeply rooted in causes which profoundly affect all the developments of social life and modes of thought, as carlyle well understood. but i am now speaking merely of the exterior and surface effect of the ubiquitous sheets of paper of all colours of the rainbow, with their monstrous pictorial illustrations. i know that to say that it vulgarises the town to a quite infinite degree may be thought to be mere meaningless cant, or illiberal affectation, itself truly vulgar. yet surely the accusation must be allowed to be a just one. if brazen-faced self-assertion, frantically eager competition in the struggle for profit, and the persuasion that this can best be attained by the sort of assertions and inducements with which the walls are covered, be not vulgar, what is? and what of the public which is attracted by the devices which the experience of those who cater for it, teach them to employ? i miss in the london of the present day a kind of shop which was not uncommon in the days when i first knew the town—shops at which one description of article only was sold, and where that one was to be had notoriously of the best possible quality; shops that appeared to despise all the finery of glass and brass and mahogany; where prices were not cut down to the lowest possible figure by the competitive necessity of underselling, but where every article could be trusted to be what it pretended to be. shops of this kind never advertised at all, but were content to trust for business to the reputation they had made for them{46}selves. i am told that everything is a great deal cheaper than it used to be, and truly find that such is the case. but i am not at all persuaded that i get better value for my money. to tell the truth, it seems to my old-fashioned notions and habits that in commercial matters we have arrived at the cheap and nasty stage of development. i am a poor man—far too poor a man to drink lafitte bordeaux. but that need not compel me to drink cheap claret or any abomination of the kind! good ale is far better than bad wine, and good water better than bad beer! at least that is what the experience of well nigh four score years has taught me!
one of my earliest strolls in london revisited lately, was to the old haunts i had once known so well at lincoln’s inn. i had walked along the new embankment lost in wonder and admiration. the most incorrigible laudator temporis acti cannot but admit that nineteenth century london has there done something and possesses something which any city on this earth may well be proud of! and so i came to the temple, and rambling through its renovated gardens and courts thought how infinitely more inviting they looked than anything in belgrave square, or mayfair! templa quam dilecta! why, if only a wall could be built around the precincts high enough and strong enough to shut out london sounds and london smells and london atmosphere, one might be almost as well there as in magdalen at oxford!
{47}
and alsatia too, its next door neighbour to the eastward, all ravaged and routed out, its mysterious courts and light-abhorring alleys exposed to the flouting glare of a sunshine baking a barren extent, devoted apparently to dead cats and potsherds! that whitefriars district used to be a favourite exploring ground of mine after the publication of the fortunes of nigel. how the copper captains, if condemned to walk their former haunts, would slink away in search of the cover of darksome nooks no longer to be found! what would miss trapbois’s ghost, wandering in the unsheltered publicity of the new embankment, think of the cataclysm which has overwhelmed the world she knew!
then, marvelling at the ubiquitous railway bridges and arches, which seem to return again and again like the recurring horrors of a nightmare dream, i passed westward, where the fleet prison is not, and where even temple bar is no more, till i came to chancery lane, which seemed to retain much of its old dinginess, and passed thence under the unchanged old gateway into lincoln’s inn old square, where my father’s chambers were, and where i used to go to him with my nonsense verses.
old square looks much as it used to look, i think. and the recollection darted across my mind—who shall say why?—of a queer-looking shambling figure, whom my father pointed out to me one day from the window of his chambers. “that,” said he, “is jockey bell, perhaps the first conveyancer in england. he probably knows more of the law of real property than any man breathing.” he was a rather short,{48} squab-looking, and very shabby figure, who walked, i think, a little lame. he came, i was told, from the north country, and spoke with a strong northumbrian accent. “it is a dreadful thing to have to decipher an opinion of his,” said my father; “he is said to have three handwritings—one when he is sober, which he can read himself; one when he is drunk, which his clerk can read; and one next morning after being drunk, which no human being can read!”
and i looked for the little shabby stuffy court, in which i had so often watched eldon’s lowering brow, as he doubted over some knotty point. my father had the highest opinion of his intellectual power and legal knowledge. but he did not like him. he used to say that his mind was an instrument of admirable precision, but his soul the soul of a pedlar. i take it eldon’s quintessential toryism was obnoxious to my father’s liberalism. he used to repeat the following “report” of a case in the court of chancery:—
“mr. leech[a] made a speech;
’twas learned, terse, and strong.
mr. hart on the other part,
was neat and glib, but wrong.
mr. parker made it darker;
’twas dark enough without!
mr. cook cited a book;
and the chancellor said, i doubt.”
una omnes premit nox!
of course among the other changes of sixty years {49}language had changed. there had been a change especially in pronunciation, a little before my time. only very old and old-fashioned people continued in my earliest years to say room for rome; gould for gold; obleege for oblige; jeames for james (one of our chaplains at winchester, i remember, always used to speak of st. jeames); a beef-steek for a beef-steak; or to pronounce the “a” in danger, stranger, and the like, as it is in “man.” but it is a singular fact, that despite the spread, and supposed improvement of education, the literary—or perhaps it would be better to say the printed—language of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century was much more correct than that of the latter part of it. i constantly find passages in books and newspapers written with the sublimest indifference to all grammatical rules, and all proprieties of construction. a popular writer of fiction says that her hero “rose his head”! and another tells her readers that something happened when “the brunt of the edge had worn off”! there are certain words, such as “idiosyncrasy,” “type,” “momentary,” and many others which i cannot while writing recollect, which are constantly used, not by one writer only, but by many, to express meanings wholly different from those which they really bear. there is another word which is worth mentioning, because the misuse of it is rapidly becoming endemic. i mean the verb trouble; which it seems to me all the world before the birth of the present generation very well knew to be an active not a neuter verb. now scarcely a day passes without my meeting with such phrases as{50} “he did not trouble,” meaning, trouble himself; “i hope you won’t trouble,” instead of trouble yourself. to old-fashioned ears it seems a detestable vulgarism. but as far as i can gather from observing books that have a greater, and books that have a lesser degree, of success, and from the remarks of the critical journals, a book is in these latter days deemed none the worse, nor is at all less likely to find favour with the public, because it is full of grammatical or linguistic solecisms. now certainly this is an instance and indication of changed ideas; for it assuredly was not the case when george the third was king.
another difference between that day and this of very considerable social significance may be observed in the character and development of the slang in use. there was at the former period very little slang of the kind that may be considered universal. different classes had different phrases and locutions that were peculiar to them, and served more or less as a bond of union and exclusiveness as regarded outsiders. the criminal classes had their slang. the universities had theirs. there was costermongers’ slang. and there was a slang peculiar to the inner circles of the fashionable world, together with many other special dialects that might be named. but the specialities of these various idioms were not interchangeable, nor for the most part intelligible outside the world to which they belonged. nor—and this difference is a very notable one—did slang phrases grow into acceptance with the{51} rapidity or universality which now characterises their advent—a notable difference, because it, of course, arises from the increased rapidity of communication and from the much greater degree in which all classes and all provincial and town populations are mixed together and rubbed against each other. it used to be said, and is still said by some old world folks, that the use of slang is vulgar. and the younger generation, which uses it universally, ridicules much the old fogey narrowness which so considers it. but the truth is, that there was in the older time nothing really vulgar in the use of the slang which then prevailed. why should not every class and every profession have its own shibboleths and its own phrases? and is there not real vulgarity in the mind which considers a man vulgar for using the language of the class to which he really belongs? but the modern use of slang is truly vulgar for a very different reason. it is vulgar because it arises from one of the most intrinsically vulgar of all the vulgar tendencies of a vulgar mind—imitation. there are slang phrases, which, because they vividly or graphically express a conception, or clothe it with humour, are admirable. but they are admirable only in the mouths of their inventors.
of course it is an abuse of language to say that the beauty of a pretty girl strikes you with awe. but he who first said of some girl that she was “awfully” pretty, was abundantly justified by the half humorous half serious consideration of all the effects such loveliness may produce. but then, because{52} this was felt to be the case, and the mot was accepted, all the tens of thousands of idiotic cretins who have been rubbed down into exact similarity to each other by excessive locomotion and the “spread” of education—spread indeed after the fashion in which a gold-beater spreads his metal—imitate each other in the senseless use of it. they are just like the man in the joe miller story, who, because a laugh followed when a host, whose servant let fall a dish with a boiled tongue in it, said it was only a lapsus lingu?, ordered his own servant to throw down a leg of mutton, and then made the same remark!
there was an old gentleman who had a very tolerable notion of what is vulgar and what is not, and who characterised “imitators” as a “servile herd.” and surely, if, as we are often told, this is a vulgar age, the fact is due to the prevalence of this very tap-root of vulgarity, imitation. of course i am not speaking of imitation in any of the various cases in which there is an end in view outside the fact of the imitation. the child in order to speak must imitate those whom it hears speaking. if you would make a pudding, you must imitate the cook; if a coat, the tailor. but the imitation which is essentially vulgar, the very tap-root, as i have said, of vulgarity, is imitation for imitation’s sake. and that is why i think modern slang is essentially vulgar. if it is your real opinion—right or wrong matters not—that any slang phrase expresses any idea with peculiar accuracy, vividness, or humour,{53} use it by all means; and he is a narrow blockhead who sees any vulgarity in your doing so. but for heaven’s sake, my dear dick, don’t use it merely because you heard bob use it!
yet there is something pathetically humble too about a man so conscious of his own worthlessness as to be ever anxious to look like somebody else. and surely a man must have a painful consciousness of his inability to utter any word of his own with either wit or wisdom or sense in it, who habitually strives to borrow the wit of the last retailer of the current slang whom he has heard.
in some respects, however, this is, i think, a less vulgar age than that of my youth. vulgar exclusiveness on grounds essentially illiberal was far more common. it will perhaps seem hardly credible at the present day that middle-class professional society, such as that of barristers, physicians, rectors, and vicars, should sixty years ago have deemed attorneys and general medical practitioners (or apothecaries, as the usual, and somewhat depreciatory term was) inadmissible to social equality. but such was the case. my reminiscences of half a century or more ago seem to indicate also that professional etiquette has been relaxed in various other particulars. i hear of physicians being in partnership with others of the same profession—an arrangement which has a commercial savour in it that would have been thought quite infra dig. in my younger day. i hear also of their accepting, if not perhaps exacting, payments of a smaller amount than the traditional{54} guinea. this was unheard of in the old days. an english physician is a member of the most generously liberal profession that exists or ever existed on earth. and it was an every-day occurrence for a physician to think more of the purse of his patient than of the value of his own services. but he did this either by refusing to accept any fee whatever, or by declining it on the occasion of subsequent visits: never by diminishing the amount of it. in some other cases professional dignity had to be maintained under circumstances that entailed considerable sacrifices on those who were called upon to maintain it. it was not etiquette, for instance, for a barrister going on circuit to travel otherwise than by a private conveyance. he might hire a post chaise, or he might ride his own horse, or even a hired one, but he must not travel by a stage coach, or put up at an hotel. i have heard it said that this rule originated in the notion that a barrister travelling to an assize town by the public coach might fall in with some attorney bound on a similar errand, and might so be led, if not into the sin, at least into temptation to the sin of “huggery.” i dare say many a young barrister of the present day does not know what huggery means or meant!
among the sights and sounds which were familiar to the eye and ear in the london of my youth, and which are so no longer, may be mentioned the twopenny postman. not many probably of the rising generation are aware, that in their fathers’ days the london postal service was dual the “twopenny{55} postman,” who delivered letters sent from one part of london to another, was a different person from the “general postman,” who delivered those which came from the country. the latter wore a scarlet, the former a blue livery. and the two administrations were entirely distinct. in those days, when a letter from york to london cost a shilling, or not much less, the weight of a single letter was limited solely by the condition that it must be written on one sheet or piece of paper only. two pieces of paper, however small, or however light, incurred a double postage. i have sent for a single postage an enormous sheet of double folio outweighing some ten sheets of ordinary post paper. of course envelopes were unknown. every sheet had to be folded so that it could be sealed and the address written on the back of it.
another notable london change which occurs to me is that which has come to the haymarket. in my day it was really such. the whole right hand side of the street going downwards, from the piccadilly end to the opera house, used to be lined with loads of hay. the carts were arranged in close order side by side with their back parts towards the foot pavement, which was crowded by the salesmen and their customers.
i might say a good deal too about the changes in the theatrical london world and habits, but the subject is a large one, and has been abundantly illustrated. it is moreover one which in its details{56} is not of an edifying nature. and it must suffice, therefore, to bear my testimony to the greatness of the purifying change which has been brought about in all the habits of playgoers and playhouses mainly and firstly by the exertions of my mother’s old and valued friend mr. macready.
