An American Girl in London

'Are you impressed?' he said, disguising it with a smile.

'Very much,' I answered him. 'In a way. Aren't you?' 'I think they're imbecile,' said Mr. Mafferton. 'Imbecile old Things! I have been wondering what they could possibly suggest to you.'

Mr. Mafferton certainly spoke in that way. I remember it distinctly. Because I depended upon it in taking, as we went round, a certain freedom of criticism – depended upon it, I had reason to believe afterwards, unwarrantably.

'Let us look at them individually,' I said, rising. 'Collectively, I find them lovable.'

'Well, now, I envy them!' replied Mr. Mafferton, with great coolness. This was surprisingly frivolous in Mr. Mafferton, who was usually quite what would be called a serious person, and just for a minute I did not quite know what to say. Then I laughed a little frivolously too. 'I suppose you intend that for a compliment, Mr. Mafferton,' I said. Privately, I thought it very clumsy. 'This is Number One, I think' – and we stopped before William the Conqueror asking Matilda of Flanders to sit down.

'I don't know that I did,' said Mr. Mafferton – which made the situation awkward for me; for if there is an uncomfortable thing, it is to appropriate a compliment which was not intended. An Englishman is a being absolutely devoid of tact.

'So this is William the Conqueror?' I said, by way of changing the subject.

'It may be a little like his clothes,' said Mr. Mafferton, indifferently.

'Oh! don't say that, Mr. Mafferton. I'm sure he looks every inch a William the Conqueror! See how polite he is to his wife, too – I suppose that's because he's French?'

Mr. Mafferton didn't say anything, and it occurred to me that perhaps I had not expressed myself well.

'Do you notice,' I went on, 'how he wears his crown – all tipped to one side? He reminds me just a little, Mr. Mafferton, with that type of face – enterprising, you know – and hair that length, only it ought to be dark, and if the crown were only a wide-brimmed, soft felt hat – he reminds mo very much of those Californian ranchers and miners Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller write about.'

'Do you mean cowboys?' asked Mr. Mafferton, in a way that told me he wasn't going to agree with me.

'Yes, that kind of person. I think William the Conqueror would make a beautiful cowboy – a regular "Terror of the Canyon."'

'Can't say I see it,' said Mr. Mafferton, fixing his eye upon the bass 'cello at the other end of the room.

'It isn't in that direction,' I said, and Mr. Mafferton became exceedingly red. Then it occurred to me that possibly over here that might be considered impertinent, so I did my best to make up for it. 'A very nice face, isn't it?' I went on. 'What is he particularly noted for, Mr. Mafferton, besides the Curfew, and the Doomsday Book, and introducing old families into England?'

Mr. Mafferton bit his moustache. I had never seen anybody bite his moustache before, though I had always understood from novels that it was done in England. Whether American gentlemen have better tempers, or whether they are afraid of injuring it, or why the habit is not a common one with us, I am unable to say.

'Really, Miss Wick,' Mr. Mafferton responded, with six degrees of frost, 'I – is there nothing about it in the catalogue? He established the only date which would ever stick in my memory – 1066. But you mustn't think he brought all the old families in England over with him, Miss Wick – it is incorrect.'

'"I daresay," I said; 'people get such curious ideas about England in America, Mr. Mafferton.' But that did not seem to please Mr. Mafferton either. 'I think they ought to know,' he said, so seriously that I did not like to retaliate with any English misconceptions of American matters. And from what I know of Mr. Mafferton now, I do not think he would have seen the slightest parallel.

'How this brings it all back, I said, as we looked at William the Second, surnamed Rufus, in blue and yellow, with a plain front – 'the marks in history at school, and the dates let in at the sides of the pages! "His dead body, with an arrow sticking in it, was found by Purkiss, a charcoal-burner, and carried in a cart to Winchester, where it was buried in the Cathedral." I remember I used to torment myself by wondering whether they pulled the arrow out, because in my history it didn't say they did.'

'It's a fact,' said Mr. Mafferton; 'one always does think of the old chap with the arrow sticking in him. Burne-Jones or one of those fellows ought to paint it – the forest, you know, twilight, and the charcoal-burner in a state of funk. Tremendously effective – though, I daresay, it's been done scores of times.'

'And sold to be lithographed in advertisements!' I added.

'Ah, Miss Wick, that is the utilitarian American way of looking at things!' Mr. Mafferton remarked, jocularly; and I don't think I could have been expected to refrain from telling him that I had in mind a certain soap not manufactured in America.

When we got as far as Henry the Second, Curtmantle, whom Madame Tussaud describes as a 'wise and good king,' and who certainly has an amiable, open countenance, I noticed that all the crowns were different, and asked Mr. Mafferton about it – whether at that time every king had his crown made to order, and trimmed according to his own ideas, or had to take whatever crown was going; and whether it was his to do as he liked with, or went with the throne; and if the majority of the kings had behaved properly about their crowns, and where they all were. But if Mr. Mafferton knew, he chose to be equivocal – he did not give me any answer that I feel I could rely upon sufficiently to put into print. Then we passed that nice brave crusading Richard the First, surnamed Coeur de Lion, in some domestic argument with his sweet Berengaria; and Mr. Mafferton, talking about her, used the expression, 'Fair flower of Navarre.' But at that time he was carrying the catalogue.

King John I thought delightful; I could not have believed it possible to put such a thoroughly bad temper into wax, and I said so to Mr. Mafferton, who agreed with me, though without enthusiasm. 'The worst king who ever sat on the English throne!' I repeated, meditatively, quoting from Madame Tussaud – 'that's saying a great deal, isn't it, Mr. Mafferton?' My escort said No, he couldn't say he thought it represented such an acme of wickedness, and we walked on, past swarthy little sad Charles the Second, in armour and lace, who looks – and how could he help it? – as if he were always thinking of what happened to his sire – I suppose the expression 'poppa' is unknown among royalties. Mr. Mafferton would not agree to this either; he seemed to have made up his mind not to agree to anything further.

I should like to write a whole chapter about Henry the Eighth as he looked that day, though I daresay it is an habitual expression, and you may have seen it often yourself. He was standing in the midst of a group of ladies, including some of his wives, stepping forward in an impulsive, emotional way; listening, with grief in both his eyes, to the orchestra's rendition of as if deeply deprecating the painful necessity of again becoming a widower. It was beautiful to see the way the music worked upon his feelings. It will be impossible for me ever to think so badly of him again.

Bury! Bury! Let the grave close o'er.

'What is your impression of him?' asked Mr. Mafferton.

I said I thought he was too funny for words.

'He was a monster!' my friend remarked, 'and you are quite the first person, I should say, who has ever discovered anything humorous in him.' And I gathered from Mr. Mafferton's tone that, while it was pardonable to think badly of an English monarch, it was improper to a degree to find him amusing.

Then I observed that they were all listening with Henry the Eighth – Philippa of Hainault with her pink nose, and the Black Prince in mail, and Catharine of Arragon embracing her monkey, and Cardinal Wolsey in red, and Caxton in black, and Chaucer in poet's grey, listening intently – you could tell even by their reflections in the glass – as the orchestra went on —

The days that have been, and never shall be more!

Personally, I felt sorry for them all, even for that old maid in armour, James the Second. Mr. Mafferton, by the way, could see nothing in the least old-maidish about this sovereign. They must have had, as a rule, such a very good time while it lasted – it must have been so thoroughly disagreeable to die! I wanted immensely to ask Mr. Mafferton – but somehow his manner did not encourage me to do it – whether in those very early times kings were able to wear their crowns every day without exciting comment, as Madame Tussaud distinctly gives you the idea that they did. And it seemed to me that in those days it must have been really worth while to be a king, and be different from other people, in both dress and deportment. I would not go through the other rooms, because I did not believe anything could be more beautiful than the remains of your early sovereigns, and, moreover, Mr. Mafferton was getting so very nearly sulky that I thought I had better not. But just through the door I caught a glimpse of one or two American Presidents in black, with white ties. They had intelligent faces, but beside your Plantagenets I don't mind confessing they didn't look anything!

XI

I HAD not the least expectation of being fortunate enough to see your Parliament open, having always heard that all the peeresses wanted to go on that occasion, and knowing how little sitting accommodation you had for anybody. Americans find nothing more impressive in England than the difficulty of getting a look at your system of government – our own is so very accessible to everyone who chooses to study it, and to come and sit in the general gallery of the House of Congress or the Senate without making a disturbance. The thing an American tells first, and with most pride, when he comes home after visiting England, is that he has attended a sitting of Parliament and seen Mr. Gladstone; if he has heard your veteran politician speak, he is prouder still. So I had cherished the hope of somehow getting into the House while Parliament was in session, and seeing all the people we read so much about at home in connection with the Irish Question – it was the thing, I believe, I had set my heart upon doing most; but tickets for the opening of Parliament from Mr. Mafferton, with a note informing Lady Torquilin that his cousin had promised to look after us on the occasion, represented more than my highest aspiration.

Lady Torquilin was pleased, too, though I don't think she intended to express her pleasure when she said, with an air of philosophical acceptance of whatever Fate might send, 'Providence only knows, my dear, how the old man will behave! He may be as agreeable as possible – as merry as a grig – and he may be in a temper like the – '; and Lady Torquilin compressed her lips and nodded her head in a way that told me how her remark would finish if she were not a member of the Church of England, rather low, and a benefactor to deep-sea fishermen and Dr. Barnardo, with a strong objection to tobacco in any form. 'We must avoid subjects that are likely to provoke him: local self-government for Ireland has given him apoplexy twice; I've heard of his getting awful tantrums about this last Licensing Bill; and marriage with a deceased wife's sister, I know, is a thing to avoid!'

Then it dawned upon me that this was Mr. Mafferton's cousin, who was a lord, and I had a very great private satisfaction that I should see what he was like.

'I remember,' I said. 'This is the cousin that you said was an old – '

'Brute!' Lady Torquilin finished for me, seeing that I didn't quite like to. 'So he is, when he's in a rage! I wouldn't be Lady Mafferton, poor dear, for something! An ordinary "K" and an ordinary temper for me!' I asked Lady Torquilin what she meant by 'an ordinary K'; and in the next half-hour I got a lesson on the various distinctions of the English aristocracy that interested me extremely. Lady Torquilin's 'K,' I may say, while I am talking about it, was the 'C.M.G.' kind, and not the 'K' sometimes conferred late in life upon illustrious butchers. Lady Torquilin didn't seem to think much of this kind of 'K,' but I was glad to hear of it. It must be a great encouragement to honesty and industry in the humbler walks of life, or, as you would say, among the masses; and though, I suppose, it wouldn't exactly accord with our theory of government, I am sorry we have nothing even remotely like it in America.

It was a nice day, a lovely day, an extraordinary day, the February day Lady Torquilin and I compromised upon a hansom and drove to the Parliament buildings. A person has such a vivid, distinct recollection of nice days in London! The drive knocked another of my preconceived ideas to pieces – the idea that Westminster was some distance off, and would have to be reached by train – not quite so far, perhaps, as Washington is from New York, for that would just as likely as not put it in the sea, but a considerable distance. I suppose you will think that inexcusable; but it is very difficult to be enough interested in foreign capitals to verify vague impressions about them, and Westminster is a large-sounding name, that suggests at least a mayor and a town council of its own. It was odd to find it about twenty minutes from anywhere in Loudon, and not to know exactly when you had arrived until the cab rolled under the shadow of the Abbey, and stopped in the crowd that waited to cheer the great politicians. Lady Torquilin immediately asked one of the policemen which way to go – I don't know anybody who appreciates what you might call the encyclopaedic value of the London police more that Lady Torquilin – and he waved us on. 'Straight ahead, madame, and turn in at the 'orseback statyou,' he said, genially, the distance being not more than two hundred yards from where we stood, and the turning-in point visible On the way, notwithstanding, Lady Torquilin asked two other policemen. My friend loves the peace of mind that follows absolute certainty. Presently we were following the rustling elegance of two or three tall ladies, whom I at once pronounced to be peeresses, through the broad, quiet, red corridor that leads to the House of Lords.

We were among the very first, and had our choice of the long, narrow seats that run along the wall in a terrace on each side of the Chamber. Fortunately, Lady Torquilin had attended other openings of Parliament, and knew that we must sit on the left; otherwise we might just as likely as not have taken our places on the other side, where there were only two or three old gentlemen with sticks and silk hats – which, I reflected afterwards, would have been awful. But, as it happened, we sat down very decorously in our proper places, and I tried to realise, as we looked at the crowded galleries and the long, narrow, solemn crimson room with the throne-chair at one end, that I was in the British House of Lords. Our Senate, just before the opening of Congress, is so very different. Most of the senators are grey-haired, and many of them are bald, but they all walk about quite nimbly, and talk before the proceedings begin with a certain vivacity; and there are pages running round with notes and documents, and a great many excited groups in the lobbies, and a general air of crisp business and alacrity everywhere. The only thing I could feel in the House of Lords that morning was a concentrated atmospheric essence of Importance. I was thinking of a thing Senator Ingalls said to me two years ago, which was what you would call 'comic,' when the idea struck me that it was almost time for Parliament to open, and not a single peer had arrived. So I asked Lady Torquilin when the lords might be expected to come in. Up to this time we had been discussing the millinery by which we were surrounded.

'I daresay there won't be many to-day,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Certainly very few so far!'

'Are there any here?' I asked her.

'Oh, yes – just opposite, don't you see, child! That wellset-up man with the nice, wholesome face, the third from the end in the second row from the bottom – that's Lord Rosebery; and next him is the great beer-man – I forget his title; and here is Lord Mafferton now – don't look – coming into the first row from the bottom, and leaning over to shake hands with Lord Rosebery.'

'Tell me when I can look,' I said, 'because I want to awfully. But, Lady Torquilin, are those peers? They look very respectable and nice, I'm sure, but I did expect more in the way of clothes. Where are their flowing mantles, and their chains and swords and things?'

'Only when the Queen opens Parliament in person,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Then there is a turn-out! Now you can look at Lord Mafferton – the rude old man! Fancy his having the impudence to sit there with his hat on!'

I looked at Lord Mafferton, who certainly had not removed his hat – the large, round, shiny silk hat worn by every gentleman in England, and every commercial traveller in America. Under the hat he was very pink and fat, with rather a snubby nose, and little twinkling blue eyes, and a suggestion of white whisker about the place where his chin and his cheek disappeared into his neck. He wore lavender-kid gloves, and was inclined to corpulency. I should not have trusted this description of a peer of your realm if it had come from any other American pen than my own – I should have set it down as a gross exaggeration, due to envy, from the fact that we can neither produce peers in our own country nor keep them there for any length of time; but I was obliged to believe my own eyes, and that is the way they reported Lord Mafferton from the other side of your Upper House. There were other gentlemen in the rows opposite – gentlemen all in black, and gentlemen in light waistcoats, bearded and clean-shaven, most of them elderly, but a few surprisingly middle-aged – for your natural expectation is to see a peer venerable – but I must say there was not one that I would have picked out to be a peer, for any particular reason, in the street. And it seemed to me that, since they are constitutional, as it were, there ought to be some way of knowing them. I reasoned again, however, that perhaps my lack of discrimination was due to my not being accustomed to seeing peers – that possibly the delicate distinctions and values that make up a peer would be perfectly evident to a person born, so to speak, under the shadow of the aristocracy. And in the meantime the proceedings began by everybody standing up. I don't know whether I actually expected a procession and a band, but when I discovered that we were all standing while four or five gentlemen in red gowns walked to the other end of the room and took chairs, my emotions were those of blank surprise. Presently I felt Lady Torquilin give an emphatic tug to my skirt. 'Sit down, child!' she said. 'Everybody else has! Do you want to make a speech?' – and I sat down quickly. Then I observed that a gentleman in black, also in fancy dress, was reading something indistinctly to the four or five red-gowned gentlemen, who looked very solemn and stately, but said nothing. It was so difficult for a stranger to understand, that I did not quite catch what was said to another gentleman in black with buckled shoes, but it must have been to the purport of 'Go and fetch it!' for he suddenly began to walk out backwards, stopping at every few steps to bow with great deference to them of the red gowns, which must have been very trying, for nobody returned the bows, and he never could tell who might have come in behind him. 'I suppose he has gone out for a minute to get something,' I said to Lady Torquilin; and then she told me what, of course, I ought to have known if I had refreshed myself with a little English history before starting – that he was the Usher of the Black Rod, and had been sent to bring the members of the other Parliament. And presently there was a great sound of footsteps in the corridors outside, and your House of Commons came hurrying to the 'bar,' I believe it is called, of your House of Lords. It was wonderfully interesting to look at, to a stranger, that crowd of members of your Lower House as it came, without ceremony, to the slender brass rod and stopped there, because it could come no farther – pressing against it, laying hands upon it, craning over it, and yet held back by the visible and invisible force of it. Compared with the well-fed and well-groomed old gentlemen who sat comfortably inside, these outsiders looked lean and unkempt; but there were so many of them, and they seemed so much more in earnest than the old gentlemen on the benches, that the power of the brass rod seemed to me extraordinary. I should not have been an American if I had not wondered at it, and whether the peers in mufti would not some day be obliged to make a habit of dressing up in their mantles and insignia on these occasions to impress the Commoners properly with a sense of difference and a reason for their staying outside.

Then, as soon as they were all ready to pay attention, the Vice-Chancellor read the Queen's letter, in which Her Majesty, so far as I could understand, regretted her inability to be present, told them all a good deal about what she had been doing since she wrote last, and closed by sending her kind regards and best wishes – a very pleasant letter, I thought, and well-written. Then we all stood up again while the gentlemen in red, the Lord Chancellor, and the others walked out; after which everybody dispersed, and I found myself shaking hands with Lord Mafferton in a pudgy, hearty way, as he and Lady Torquilin and I departed together.

'So this is our little Yankee!' said Lord Mafferton, with his fat round chin stretched out sideways, and his hands behind his back. Now I am quite five-feet eight, and I do not like being called names, but I found a difficulty in telling Lord Mafferton that I was not their little Yankee; so I smiled, and said nothing. 'Well, well! Come over the "duckpond" – isn't that what you call the Atlantic Ocean? – to see how fast old England is going to pieces, eh?'

'Oh!' said Lady Torquilin, 'I think Miss Wick is delighted with England, Lord Mafferton.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I am. Delighted with it! Why should anybody think it is going to pieces?'

'Oh, it's a popular fancy in some quarters,' said Lord

Mafferton. Being a lord, I don't suppose he winked at Lady Torquilin, but he did something very like it.

'I should call it a popular fallacy,' I declared; at which Lord Mafferton laughed, and said, 'It was all very well, it was all very well,' exactly like any old grandpapa. 'Miss Wick would like a look over the place, I suppose,' he said to Lady Torquilin. 'You think it would be safe, eh? No explosives concealed about her – she doesn't think of blowing us up?' And this very jocular old peer led the way through a labyrinth of chambers and corridors of which I can't possibly remember the locality or the purpose, because he went so fast.

'No doubt you've heard of Cromwell,' he said beside one door. I should have liked to know why he asked me, if there was no doubt of it; but I suppose a lord is not necessarily a logician. 'This is the room in which he signed the death-warrant of Charles the First.'

'Dear me,' I said. 'The one that he's holding a copy of on his lap at Madame Tussaud's?'

'I dare say! I dare say!' said Lord Maflerton. 'But not so fast, my dear young lady, not so fast! You mustn't go in, you know. That's not allowable!' and he whisked us away to the Library. 'Of course, Miss Wick understands,' he said to Lady Torquilin, 'that every word spoken here above a whisper means three days in a dungeon on bread and water!' By this time my ideas of peers had become so confused that I was entirely engaged in trying to straighten them out, and had very little to say of any sort; but Lord Mafferton chatted continually as we walked through the splendid rooms, only interrupting himself now and then to remind me of the dungeon and the penalty of talking. It was very difficult getting a first impression of the English House of Parliament and an English peer at the same time – they continually interrupted each other. It was in the Royal Banqueting Hall, for instance, where I was doing my best to meditate upon scenes of the past, that Lord Mafferton stated to Lady Torquilin his objection to the inside of an omnibus, and this in itself was distracting. It would never occur to anybody in America to think of a peer and an omnibus together. The vestibule of the House of Commons was full of gentlemen walking about and talking; but there was a great deliberateness about the way it was done – no excitement, and every man in his silently-expressive silk hat. They all seemed interested in each other in an observing way, too, and whether to bow or not to bow; and when Lord Mafferton recognised any of them, he was usually recognised back with great cordiality. You don't see so much of that when Congress opens. The members in the lobby are usually a great deal too much wrapped up in business to take much notice of each other. I observed, too, that the British Government does not provide cuspidores for its legislators, which struck me as reflecting very favourably upon the legislative sense of propriety here, especially as there seemed to be no obvious demand for such a thing.