Dore's London

INTRODUCTION

‘Oh, for a good spirit who would take the housetops off, with a more potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show Christian people what dark shapes issue from the amidst their homes, to swell the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forth with them! For only one night’s view of the pale phantoms rising from the scenes of our too-long neglect, and from the thick and sullen air where Vice and Fever propagate together, raining the tremendous social retributions which are ever pouring down, and ever coming thicker! Bright and blest the morning that should rise on such a night; for men, delayed no more by stumbling-blocks of their own making, which are but specks of dust upon the path between them and eternity, would then apply themselves, like creatures of one common origin, owing one duty to the Father of one family, and tending to one common end, to make the world a better place!’

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1848) Chapter 47.

Charles Dickens and Gustave Doré knew each other only slightly. The great novelist died in June 1870, already aware that his young friend Blanchard Jerrold and the feted French artist were planning to make a ‘Pilgrimage’ across a London which they saw very much through his own novels: the city Doré was to draw was very much the city of Dickens’s imagination. The present volume attempts to convey the immense power and emotional truth of Doré’s images by setting them in the rich context of writings of the period by artists of his own stature – Dickens himself, Mayhew, Collins, Thackeray, Gissing and others. This involves liberating the 180 drawings from their imprisonment in a minor work – the populist picture book conceived by Blanchard Jerrold – and rearranging them (rather as Dickens rearranged the novels for his Public Readings) so as to form a simple but potent narrative revealing their true emotional power.

Gustave Doré was born in 1832 in Strasbourg, the middle son of a civil engineer. He first achieved success at the age of 15 with a book of caricatures. When he was 17, his father died suddenly and Doré and his mother moved to a house she had inherited, in Paris. Despite several courtships, he never married nor left his mother’s house. Over the next twenty years he became the richest artist in France, earning seven million francs and being awarded the Cross of the Légion d’honneur, but despite his success he felt that his countrymen valued him merely as an illustrator. In 1855 he met Blanchard Jerrold and thereafter was taken to the heart of English society: his English friend, Canon Harford, was to dub him ‘the greatest genius of the 19th century’. In the 1860s came his greatest period of activity, with illustrations for the Bible, Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso, the Fables of La Fontaine, Paradise Lost and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. He was by now working more for the English public than for the French. In summer 1867 he moved his studio to London. In the same year, the Doré Gallery in Bond Street opened. (It was to continue well into 20th century). Doré’s popular fame was assured.

In 1855 the journalist Blanchard Jerrold was sent by the Illustrated London News to Paris to cover Queen Victoria’s visit to the Exposition Universelle, which had been inspired by London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. While there, he met the rising star of the French art world, the 23-year-old Gustave Doré. They became fast friends and in 1869 planned the book on London which is generally regarded as Doré’s greatest achievement. Jerrold described the explorations of the ‘two pilgrims’ in enthusiastic detail:

‘We spent many days and nights visiting and carefully examining the most striking scenes and phases of London life. We had one or two nights in Whitechapel, duly attended by police in plain clothes; we visited the night refuges; we journeyed up and down the river; we traversed Westminster, and had a morning or two in Drury Lane, and were betimes at the opening of Covent Garden market; we spent a morning in Newgate; we attended the boat-race, and went in a char-a-banc to the Derby, and made acquaintance with all the riotous incidents of a day on the racecourse; we dined with the Oxford and Cambridge crews; we spent an afternoon at one of the Primate’s gatherings at Lambeth Palace; we entered thieves’ public-houses; in short, I led Doré through the shadows and the sunlight of the great world of London.’ (Blanchard Jerrold, Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré, New York, Cassell ’ Co., published posthumously in 1891).

Doré’s method was to sketch unobtrusively in the street, screened by Jerrold and, in the poorer districts, protected by plain clothes policemen. When Jerrold expressed nervousness that they had returned from a long day’s exploring with only a sheaf of very rough sketches, Doré would reply confidently that he carried everything he needed in his head. Back in his studio, his initial sketches were filled with many more figures, fleshed out from the fragmentary written notes he had made on the spot. From the beginning, he seems artistically to have gone off on his own track. A quarrel threatened to develop when Jerrold discovered that Doré planned to publish his London pictures in Paris, with a new text commissioned from Louis Enault. Only Doré’s full and winning apology to his old friend and benefactor averted a rift. Throughout, there is a suspicion that while this may have been a strong friendship, it was not in artistic terms a significant meeting of minds.

The London that the two men began to explore in 1869 was a wild and dangerous place, a city of extremes, a ‘City of Dreadful Night’. Its population had expanded with frightening suddenness from one million at the beginning of the century to nearly three million, of whom forty per cent had not been born in the city. The traditional image of ‘streets paved with gold’ which had lured young country dwellers since the days of Dick Whittington was now complicated by images of destitution, of abandoned children from the slums earning a precarious living by sweeping the crossings for the heavy horse-drawn traffic, of crowded night shelters, of gin palaces, opium dens, terrible slums, of factory chimneys spewing out black smoke, and most of all of Fog – what Dickens, the city’s patron saint and chief chronicler, was to call ‘a London Particklar’ – beneath which the vices of the city seethed.

It was also a city of glamour in which the rich lived in a world of elegance and refinement, gathering in their own special places – Rotten Row in Hyde Park, the Zoological Gardens, and Chiswick – to intermingle in a dazzling world of jewels and conspicuous wealth. A new generation of entrepreneurs was determined to flaunt their new-found status. Carriages were gilded, ladies’ fashions more and more ostentatious, social behaviour increasingly prescribed and rigorously exclusive, so that a young and talented parvenu like Benjamin Disraeli would spend a lifetime eagerly learning the rules of high society as the only route to social acceptance.

Doré records this city of supreme self-confidence, the city that had hosted the Great Exhibition in 1851, that international celebration of the talents and goods of the whole world. He shows the bustling port, the world-famous docks, the international centre of commerce. He shows the rich at work and at play, visiting opera houses, balls at the Mansion House, the Park, Kensington Gardens, croquet lawns and Lord’s Cricket Ground. When he turns his attention to the poor, he brings to their humdrum lives the same sense of drama and significance. He records the ingenious ways in which they eke out a living, the vibrance and energy which makes them too Victorian Londoners, irrepressible denizens of a city of magic as well as of horror.

The poor, however, are inevitably most often depicted at work. At Billingsgate and at Covent Garden they have their own commercial hubs of life. In the streets they sell anything that can possibly be sold, from fresh milk to fly paper, from lemonade to lavender, from oysters to oranges, from mastiff pups to matches. Yet they are not necessarily figures to be pitied: they too can play. Doré shows their delight at the Punch and Judy show, at the travelling organ grinder, most of all at the Boat Race and at Derby Day. Here, rich and poor come together in two events of such social importance that almost every literary traveller in the city has left his own account of them. Here Doré shows all the classes united by love of sport: the rich have their champagne picnics; the children of the poor swarm up trees for a better view or ‘tumble’ as acrobats to earn pennies from the more well-to-do spectators. This is a London we can dimly recognize today – brought together, then as now, by great sporting events, or by royal weddings or funerals, finding a kinship in joy or in grief. It is still an inexhaustible city, still a meeting place for the whole world. A 21st-century Doré would still have extremes to record: crowds at Wembley stadium, the changing of the guard, ordinary faces in the Underground, the Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph, perhaps especially the Notting Hill Carnival with its mixture of colour, vibrancy and a faint spice of danger.

We have tried in this volume to convey a sense of the extremes of London life by dividing Doré’s wonderful images into four very simple but powerful sections: Riches, Rags, Work and Play. We begin with Londoners at their most divided – by wealth or poverty – but we end, more hopefully, with London at its most united – in the wild carnival of Derby Day. Dr Johnson’s words in 1777, predict Gustave Doré’s vision nearly a century later and still hold good today: ‘The man who is tired of London’ he observed, ‘is tired of Life.’

PREFACE

‘GONE ASTRAY’

by Charles Dickens, first published in Household Words, 13 August 1853

When I was a very small boy indeed, both in years and stature, I got lost one day in the City of London. I was taken out by Somebody (shade of Somebody forgive me for remembering no more of thy identity!), as an immense treat, to be shown the outside of Saint Giles’s Church. I had romantic ideas in connection with that religious edifice; firmly believing that all the beggars who pretended through the week to be blind, lame, one-armed, deaf and dumb, and otherwise physically afflicted, laid aside their pretences every Sunday, dressed themselves in holiday clothes, and attended divine service in the temple of their patron saint. I had a general idea that the reigning successor of Bamfylde Moore Carew acted as a sort of churchwarden on these occasions, and sat in a high pew with red curtains.

It was in the spring-time when these tender notions of mine, bursting forth into new shoots under the influence of the season, became sufficiently troublesome to my parents and guardians to occasion Somebody to volunteer to take me to see the outside of Saint Giles’s Church, which was considered likely (I suppose) to quench my romantic fire, and bring me to a practical state. We set off after breakfast. I have an impression that Somebody was got up in a striking manner – in cord breeches of fine texture and milky hue, in long jean gaiters, in a green coat with bright buttons, in a blue neckerchief, and a monstrous shirt-collar. I think he must have newly come (as I had myself) out of the hopgrounds of Kent. I considered him the glass of fashion and the mould of form: a very Hamlet without the burden of his difficult family affairs.

We were conversational together, and saw the outside of Saint Giles’s Church with sentiments of satisfaction, much enhanced by a flag flying from the steeple. I infer that we then went down to Northumberland House in the Strand to view the celebrated lion over the gateway. All the events, I know that in the act of looking up with mingled awe and admiration at that famous animal I lost that Somebody.

The child’s unreasoning terror of being lost, comes as freshly on me now as it did then. I verily believe that if I had found myself astray at the North Pole instead of in the narrow, crowded, inconvenient street over which the lion in those days presided, I could not have been more horrified. But, this first fright expended itself in a little crying and tearing up and down; and then I walked, with a feeling of dismal dignity upon me, into a court, and sat down on a step to consider how to get through life.

To the best of my belief, the idea of asking my way home never came into my head. It is possible that I may, for the time, have preferred the dismal dignity of being lost; but I have a serious conviction that in the wide scope of my arrangements for the future I had no eyes for the nearest and most obvious course. I was but very juvenile; from eight to nine years old, I fancy.

The British Lion

I had one and fourpence in my pocket, and a pewter ring with a bit of red glass in it on my little finger. This jewel had been presented to me by the object of my affections, on my birthday, when we had sworn to marry, but had foreseen family obstacles to our union, in her being (she was six years old) of the Wesleyan persuasion, while I was devotedly attached to the Church of England. The one and fourpence were the remains of half-a-crown, presented on the same anniversary by my godfather – a man who knew his duty and did it.

Armed with these amulets, I made up my little mind to seek my fortune. When I had found it, I thought I would drive home in a coach and six, and claim my bride. I cried a little more at the idea of such a triumph, but soon dried my eyes and came out of the court to pursue my plans. These were, first to go (as a species of investment) and see the Giants in Guildhall, out of whom I felt it not improbable that some prosperous adventure would arise; failing that contingency, to try about the City for any opening of a Whittington nature; baffled in that too, to go into the army as a drummer.

So, I began to ask my way to Guildhall: which I thought meant, somehow, Gold or Golden hall; I was too knowing to ask my way to the Giants, for I felt it would make people laugh. I remember how immensely broad the streets seemed now I was alone, how high the houses, how grand and mysterious everything. When I came to Temple Bar, it took me half-an-hour to stare at it, and I left it unfinished even then. I had read about the heads being exposed on the top of Temple Bar, and it seemed a wicked old place, albeit a noble monument of architecture and a paragon of utility. When at last I got away from it, behold, I came, the next minute, on the figures at St Dunstan’s! Who could see those obliging monsters strike upon the bells and go? Between the quarters there was the toyshop to look at – still there, at this present writing, in a new form – and even when that enchanted spot was escaped from, after an hour and more, then Saint Paul’s arose, and how was I to get beyond its dome, or to take my eyes from its cross of gold? I found it a long journey to the Giants, and a slow one.

I came into their presence at last, and gazed up at them with dread and veneration. They looked better-tempered, and were altogether more shiny-faced, than I had expected; but they were very big, and, as I judged their pedestals to be about forty feet high, I considered that they would be very big indeed if they were walking on the stone pavement. I was in a state of mind as to these and all such figures, which I suppose holds equally with most children. While I knew them to be images made of something that was not flesh and blood, I still invested them with attributes of life – with consciousness of my being there, for example, and the power of keeping a sly eye upon me. Being very tired I got into the corner under Magog, to be out of the way of his eye, and fell asleep.

When I started up after a long nap, I thought the giants were roaring but it was only the City. The place was just the same as when I fell asleep: no beanstalk, no fairy, no princess, no dragon, no opening in life of any kind. So, being hungry I thought I would buy something to eat, and bring it in there and eat it, before going forth to seek my fortune on the Whittington plan.

I was not ashamed of buying a penny roll in a baker’s shop, but I looked into a number of cooks’ shops before I could muster courage to go into one. At last, I saw a pile of cooked sausages in the window with the label, ‘Small Germans, A Penny.’ Emboldened by knowing what to ask for, I went in and said, ‘If you please will you sell me a small German?’ which they did, and I took it, wrapped in paper in my pocket, to Guildhall.

The London Stone

The giants were still lying by, in their sly way, pretending to take no notice, so I sat down in another corner, when what should I see before me but a dog with his ears cocked. He was a black dog, with a bit of white over one eye, and bits of white and tan in his paws, and he wanted to play – frisking about me, rubbing his nose against me, dodging at me sideways, shaking his head and pretending to run away backwards, and making himself good-naturedly ridiculous, as if he had no consideration for himself, but wanted to raise my spirits. Now, when I saw this dog I thought of Whittington, and felt that things were coming right; I encouraged him by saying ‘Hi, boy!’ ‘Poor fellow!’ ‘Good dog!’ and was satisfied that he was to be my dog for ever afterwards, and that he would help me to seek my fortune.

Very much comforted by this (I had cried a little at odd times ever since I was lost), I took the small German out of my pocket, and began my dinner by biting off a bit and throwing it to the dog, who immediately swallowed it with a one-sided jerk, like a pill. While I took a bit myself, and he looked me in the face for a second piece, I considered by what name I should call him. I thought Merrychance would be an expressive name, under the circumstances; and I was elated, I recollect, by inventing such a good one, when Merrychance began to growl at me in a most ferocious manner.

I wondered he was not ashamed of himself, but he didn’t care for that; on the contrary, he growled a good deal more. With his mouth watering, and his eyes glistening, and his nose in a very damp state, and his head very much on one side, he sidled out on the pavement in a threatening manner and growled at me, until he suddenly made a snap at the small German, tore it out of my hand, and went off with it. He never came back to help me seek my fortune. From that hour to the present, when I am forty years of age, I have never seen my faithful Merrychance again.

I felt very lonely. Not so much for the loss of the small German though it was delicious, (I knew nothing about highly peppered horse at that time) as on account of Merrychance’s disappointing me so cruelly; for I had hoped he would do every friendly thing but speak, and perhaps even more come to that. I cried a little more, and began to wish that the object of my affections had been lost with me, for company’s sake. But, then I remembered that she could not go into the army as a drummer; and I dried my eyes and ate my loaf. Coming out, I met a milkwoman, of whom I bought a pennyworth of milk; quite set up again by my repast, I began to roam about the City, and to seek my fortune in the Whittington direction.

Whittington at Highgate

When I go into the City, now, it makes me sorrowful to think that I am quite an artful wretch. Strolling about it as a lost child, I thought of the British Merchant and the Lord Mayor, and was full of reverence. Strolling about it now, I laugh at the sacred liveries of state, and get indignant with the corporation as one of the strongest practical jokes of the present day. What did I know then, about the multitude who are always being disappointed in the City; who are always expecting to meet a party there, and to receive money there, and whose expectations are never fulfilled? What did I know then, about that wonderful person, the friend in the city, who is to do so many things for so many people; who is to get this one into a post at home, and that one into a post abroad; who is to settle with this man’s creditors, provide for that man’s son, and see that other man paid; who is to ‘throw himself’ into this grand Joint-Stock certainty, and is to put his name down on that Life Assurance Directory, and never does anything predicted of him? What did I know, then, about him as the friend of gentlemen, Mosaic Arabs and others, usually to be seen at races, and chiefly residing in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square; and as being unable to discount the whole amount of that paper in money, but as happening to have by him a cask of remarkable sherry, a dressing-case, and a Venus by Titian, with which he would be willing to make up the balance? Had I ever heard of him, in those innocent days, as confiding information (which never by any chance turned out to be in the remotest degree correct) to solemn bald men, who mysteriously imparted it to breathless dinner tables? No. Had I ever learned to dread him as a shark, disregard him as a humbug, and know him for a myth? Not I. Had I ever heard of him as associated with tightness in the money market, gloom in consols, the exportation of gold, or that rock ahead in everybody’s course, the bushel of wheat? Never. Had I the least idea of what was meant by such terms as jobbery, rigging the market, cooking accounts, getting up a dividend, making things pleasant, and the like? Not the slightest. Should I have detected in Mr Hudson himself, a staring carcase of golden veal? By no manner of means. The City was to me a vast emporium of precious stones and metals, casks, and bales, honour and generosity, foreign fruits and spices. Every merchant and banker was a compound of Mr FitzWarren and Sinbad the Sailor. Smith, Payne, and Smith, when the wind was fair for Barbary and the captain present, were in the habit of calling their servants together (the cross cook included) and asking them to produce their little shipments. Glyn and Halifax had personally undergone great hardships in the valley of diamonds. Baring Brothers had seen Rocs’ eggs and travelled with caravans. Rothschild had sat in the Bazaar at Bagdad with rich stuffs for sale; and a veiled lady from the Sultan’s harem, riding on a donkey, had fallen in love with him.

Thus I wandered about the City, like a child in a dream, staring at the British merchants, and inspired by a mighty faith in the marvellousness of everything. Up courts and down courts – in and out of yards and little squares – peeping into counting-house passages and running away – poorly feeding the echoes in the court of the South Sea House with my timid steps – roaming down into Austin Friars, and wondering how the Friars used to like it – ever staring at the British merchants, and never tired of the shops – I rambled on, all through the day. In such stories as I made, to account for the different places, I believed as devoutly as in the City itself.

…It was late when I got out into the streets, and there was no moon, and there were no stars, and the rain fell heavily. When I emerged from the dispersing crowd, the ghost and the baron had an ugly look in my remembrance; I felt unspeakably forlorn; and now, for the first time, my little bed and the dear familiar faces came before me, and touched my heart. By daylight, I had never thought of the grief at home. I had never thought of my mother. I had never thought of anything but adapting myself to the circumstances in which I found myself, and going to seek my fortune.

For a boy who could do nothing but cry, and run about, saying ‘O I am lost!’ to think of going into the army was, I felt sensible, out of the question. I abandoned the idea of asking my way to the barracks – or rather the idea abandoned me – and ran about, until I found a watchman in his box. It is amazing to me, now, that he should have been sober; but I am inclined to think he was too feeble to get drunk.

This venerable man took me to the nearest watchhouse; – I say he took me, but in fact I took him, for when I think of us in the rain, I recollect that we must have made a composition, like a vignette of Infancy leading Age. He had a dreadful cough, and was obliged to lean against a wall, whenever it came on. We got at last to the watchhouse, a warm and drowsy sort of place embellished with great-coats and rattles hanging up. When a paralytic messenger had been sent to make enquiries about me, I fell asleep by the fire, and awoke no more until my eyes opened on my father’s face. This is literally and exactly how I went astray. They used to say I was an odd child, and I suppose I was. I am an odd man, perhaps.

Shade of Somebody, forgive me for the disquiet I must have caused thee! When I stand beneath the Lion, even now, I see thee rushing up and down, refusing to be comforted. I have gone astray since, many times, and further afield. May I therein have given less disquiet to others, than herein I gave to thee!

St Paul’s Cathedral from the Brewery Bridge

RICHES

THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS

by Anthony Trollope (1873)

CHAPTER 17

THE DIAMONDS ARE SEEN IN PUBLIC

…Lady Glencora’s rooms were already very full when Lizzie entered them, but she was without a gentleman, and room was made for her to pass quickly up the stairs. The diamonds had been recognised by many before she had reached the drawing-room; – not that these very diamonds were known, or that there was a special memory for that necklace; – but the subject had been so generally discussed, that the blaze of the stones immediately brought it to the minds of men and women. ‘There she is, with poor Eustace’s twenty thousand pounds round her neck,’ said Laurence Fitzgibbon to his friend Barrington Erle. ‘And there is Lord Fawn going to look after them,’ replied the other.

Lord Fawn thought it right, at any rate, to look after his bride. Lady Glencora had whispered into his ear before they went down to dinner that Lady Eustace would be there in the evening, so that he might have the option of escaping or remaining. Could he have escaped without any one knowing that he had escaped, he would not have gone up-stairs after dinner; but he knew that he was observed; he knew that people were talking about him; and he did not like it to be said that he had run away. He went up, thinking much of it all, and, as soon as he saw Lady Eustace, he made his way to her and accosted her. Many eyes were upon them, but no ear probably heard how infinitely unimportant were the words which they spoke to each other. Her manner was excellent. She smiled and gave him her hand, – just her hand without the slightest pressure, – and spoke a half-whispered word, looking into his face, but betraying nothing by her look. Then he asked her whether she would dance. Yes; – she would stand up for a quadrille; and they did stand up for a quadrille. As she danced with no one else, it was clear that she treated Lord Fawn as her lover. As soon as the dance was done she took his arm and moved for a few minutes about the room with him. She was very conscious of the diamonds, but she did not show the feeling in her face. He also was conscious of them, and he did show it. He did not recognise the necklace, but he knew well that this was the very bone of contention. They were very beautiful, and seemed to him to outshine all other jewellery in the room. And Lady Eustace was a woman of whom it might almost be said that she ought to wear diamonds. She was made to sparkle, to be bright with outside garniture, – to shine and glitter, and be rich in apparel. The only doubt might be whether paste diamonds might not better suit her character. But these were not paste, and she did shine and glitter and was very rich. It must not be brought as an accusation against Lady Glencora’s guests that they pressed round to look at the necklace. Lady Glencora’s guests knew better than to do that. But there was some slight ferment, – slight, but still felt both by Lord Fawn and by Lady Eustace. Eyes were turned upon the diamonds, and there were whispers here and there. Lizzie bore it very well; but Lord Fawn was uncomfortable.

A Ball at the Mansion House

‘I like her for wearing them,’ said Lady Glencora to Lady Chiltern.

‘Yes; – if she means to keep them. I don’t pretend, however, to know anything about it. You see the match isn’t off.’

‘I suppose not. What do you think I did? He dined here, you know, and, before going down-stairs, I told him that she was coming. I thought it only fair.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘I took care that he shouldn’t have to say anything; but, to tell the truth, I didn’t expect him to come up.’

‘There can’t be any quarrel at all,’ said Lady Chiltern.

‘I’m not sure of that,’ said Lady Glencora. ‘They are not so very loving.’

Lady Eustace made the most of her opportunity. Soon after the quadrille was over she asked Lord Fawn to get her carriage for her. Of course he got it, and of course he put her into it, passing up and down-stairs twice in his efforts on her behalf. And of course all the world saw what he was doing. Up to the last moment not a word had been spoken between them that might not have passed between the most ordinary acquaintance, but, as she took her seat, she put her face forward and did say a word. ‘You had better come to me soon,’ she said.

‘I will,’ said Lord Fawn.

‘Yes; you had better come soon. All this is wearing me, – perhaps more than you think.’

‘I will come soon,’ said Lord Fawn, and then he returned among Lady Glencora’s guests, very uncomfortable. Lizzie got home in safety and locked up her diamonds in the iron box.

NOTES ON ENGLAND

by Hippolyte Taine, translation by W.F. Rae (1872)

CHAPTER 2

SUNDAY IN LONDON. THE STREETS AND PARKS

…From London Bridge to Hampton Court are eight miles, that is, nearly three leagues of buildings. After the streets and quarters erected together, as one piece, by wholesale, like a hive after a model, come the countless pleasure retreats, cottages surrounded with verdure and trees in all styles – Gothic, Grecian, Byzantine, Italian, of the Middle Age, or the Revival, with every mixture and every shade of style, generally in lines or clusters of five, ten, twenty of the same sort, apparently the handiwork of the same builder, like so many specimens of the same vase or the same bronze. They deal in houses as we deal in Parisian articles. What a multitude of well-to-do, comfortable, and rich existences! One divines accumulated gains, a wealthy and spending middle-class quite different from ours, so pinched, so straitened. The most humble, in brown brick, are pretty by dint of tidiness; the window panes sparkle like mirrors; there is nearly always a green and flowery patch; the front is covered with ivy, honeysuckle, and nasturtiums.

The entire circumference of Hyde Park is covered with houses of this sort, but finer, and these in the midst of London retain a country look; each stands detached in its square of turf and shrubs, has two stories in the most perfect order and condition, a portico, a bell for the tradespeople, a bell for the visitors, a basement for the kitchen and the servants, with a flight of steps for the service; very few mouldings and ornaments; no outside sun-shutters; large, clear windows, which let in plenty of light; flowers on the sills and at the portico; stables in a mews apart, in order that their odours and sight may be kept at a distance; all the external surface covered with white, shining, and varnished stucco; not a speck of mud or dust; the trees, the turf, the flowers, the servants prepared as if for an exhibition of prize products. How well one can picture the inhabitant after seeing his shell! In the first place, it is the Teuton who loves Nature, and who needs a reminder of the country; next, it is the Englishman who wishes to be by himself in his staircase as in his room, who could not endure the promiscuous existence of our huge Parisian cages, and who, even in London, plans his house as a small castle, independent and enclosed. Besides, he is simple, and does not desire external display; on the other hand, he is exacting in the matter of condition and comfort, and separates his life from that of his inferiors. The