CHANSON BY BÉRANGER. THE GARRET. I TREAD the haunt where a teacher, no mild one, A garret 'tis; never think I deny it: There stood my truckle, hard, shabby, and small; Scribbled with coal, half a line on the wall. My pretty Bess, a light bonnet so neatly Trips, and her shawl for a curtain suspends. 'Twas here one day, day of riches abounding, Round the full board as a chorus we pealed, Hark! 'twas a cry of glad triumph resounding, "Bonaparte at Marengo is lord of the field!" Loud cannons roar, and a new theme is chanted: Proudly the deeds of our heroes we tell : King's foot shall ne'er on our borders be planted !"- Away!—these walls do bewitch my poor reason. Gladly I'd give for one month of that season While dreams beguile of love, fame, folly, pleasure, While all our own is Hope's infinite treasure, W. K. K. A DAY IN LONDON BY A FOREIGNER. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER. I HAD passed the night at a masked ball; one is always stupid the day after a gay assembly, therefore I took the sudden resolution of treating my ennui in a homoeopathic way. Some hours after, having scarcely taken time to cast aside my turban, my scymitar, and all the paraphernalia of my Turkish attire, I found myself en route for London, the native city of spleen. At Boulogne, which is completely Englished, I, not speaking that language, was reduced to pantomime to express that I was hungry and sleepy; at length an interpreter was found, through whose services I obtained a supper and a bed. At Boulogne they understood nothing but English. It is a remark I have made in regard to the frontiers of France, that they are invaded by the language and the customs of their neighbours. Thus, all the coast opposite to England, is English; Alsace, on its borders, is German; Flanders is Belgian; Provence, Italian; and Gascony, Spanish. Every one knows that a Parisian is often at a loss in these provinces. At six o'clock next morning I embarked in the Harlequin steamer, and in a few hours a white line was visible above the waters; it was the coast of Albion. The weather was fine, not a cloud in the heavens, yet a diadem of vapour crowned the front of Old England. As we proceeded, I observed in all directions, curling to the skies, the smoke of innumerable steam-boats-indicating the approach to the Babylon of the Seas. Near the coast of France, on the contrary, the solitude is complete; not a sail, not a steamer, is to be descried. But here-the more one advances, the more the crowd increases: the horizon is encumbered with them; the sails take the shape of domes, the masts look like lofty spires; one could fancy it an immense Gothic town floating along-a Venice detached from its foundations, which you were about to encounter. The Thames, or rather the arm of the sea into which its waters fall, is of such a size, and its banks are so low, that they cannot be seen from the middle of the stream; it is only after sailing up some miles that their flat, dingy outlines are discovered between the grey skies and the yellow water. The narrower the river becomes, the more compact becomes the crowd of vessels of all sizes, from the immense threemasted ship to the fishing-smack-from the gigantic steam-boat to the shallow wherry in which two people can hardly sit; and all these going up, coming down, and passing each other without the slightest confusion, forms one of the most extraordinary spectacles that can be presented to the human eye. The West India Docks are so enormous, that they are beyond all belief; they seem to be the work of Cyclops and Titans. Above the houses, the warehouses, the stairs, and all the motley constructions that encumber the sides of the river, you discover a prodigious alley of masts, which is prolonged to infinity; a confusion of rigging, spars, cordage, interlaced with a density surpassing that of the thickest American forest. It is there that is constructed and refitted the innumerable army of ships which go forth to seek the riches of the whole world, to cast them afterwards into that bottomless gulf of misery and luxury called London. The sea is the native country of the English; and so fond are they of it, that many noblemen spend their lives in making dangerous voyages in little vessels equipped and commanded by themselves. The Yacht Club has no other end but to encourage this national taste. So little do they like land, that they have a hospital placed in the middle of the Thames, in the hull of a large ship, for the use of those sailors who are taken ill in the port of London. The buildings that skirt the Thames are covered with letters and names of all colours and sizes. At a distance, you ask yourself what new order of architecture this is; but on a nearer inspection, you find it resolved into immense gilded letters, which serve the double purpose of balcony and sign to the magazine or manufactory it adorns. In this branch of charlatanism the English are without rivals. I was not a little surprised to see the Tower still standing; for I had supposed, from the awful accounts the newspapers gave of the fire, that it had been reduced to ashes. The Tower, however, has lost nothing of its ancient physiognomy-there it still stands, with its high walls, its sinister aspect, and its low arcade (the Traitors' Gate), under which a dark boat, like the boat of the Shades, used to convey the guilty and those who were destined to death. The steam-boat at length reached the Custom-house, where our baggage was to be left until the next day; for Sunday is as scrupulously kept in London, as the Jewish Sabbath at Jerusalem. We landed, and, not knowing a word of English, I felt somewhat uneasy how I was to get on; but I had written on a card the name of the street, and the number of the house, to which I was going: luckily for me, the driver of the cab, to whom I showed it, could read; and having deposited myself in his vehicle, which, by the way, was of the form most in vogue at present in Paris, though in London only used as hackney carriages, we set off with the rapidity of lightning. Whilst we were driving along the streets that separate the Custom-house from High Holborn, I was amazed to observe the profound silence and solitude which reigned around. One might have thought oneself in a city of the dead, or in one of those towns peopled by petrified inhabitants, such as we read of in Oriental tales. All the shops were shut; not a single human face was visible at the windows; and in the streets, was only here and there to be seen some solitary figure flitting like a spectre along. This stillness and gloom contrasted so forcibly with the idea I had always entertained of the bustle and animation of London, that I was lost in astonishment until I remembered it was Sunday. That day, which with us is, at least for the common people, a day for pleasure, for promenading, for dress, for dancing and festivity-on the other side of the Straights is passed in a manner inconceivably stupid. The taverns are shut at midnight the evening before; at the theatres there are no performances; the shops are hermetically closed, so that those who have neglected to lay in provisions the day before, would find it difficult to get anything to eat. Life itself seems suspended: for fear of profaning the solemnity of the Sabbath, London dares not make single movement; it is an indulgence, that it allows itself to breathe. On that day, after having heard a sermon from the minister of the sect to which they belong-all good English people imprison themselves in their own houses, to meditate on the Bible, offer up their ennui to God, and rejoice in being neither French nor Papist-a source of inexhaustible self-gratulation. The next day, at an early hour, I set off alone to look about me,hating nothing so much as a guide, who compels you to see all you do not care to see, and to pass all that might interest you. I always avoid what are called the BEAUTIES of a town, viz. the monuments, churches, and other public buildings: one can see these everywhere in engravings. Behold me, then, threading by chance the streets as they presented themselves. The shops began to open lazily-Paris rises earlier than London; it is not until near ten o'clock that London wakes,-to be sure, it retires at a late hour at night. What struck me first, was the immense width of the streets, with pavements so broad that twenty people might walk on them abreast. The lowness of the houses-for they are seldom more than three stories high-renders more sensible the width of the streets. Another thing which adds to the peculiarity of the aspect of London, is, the sombre colour which uniformly clothes its objects. The immense quantity of coal used in London is one of the principal causes of this general mourning. The statues share in the darkness of the houses; and those of the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of York, and George the Third on horseback, resemble only negroes or chimney-sweeps, so encrusted and disfigured are they with the impalpable coal powder which seems to fall from the very skies of London. The skies of London, by the way, even when divested of clouds, are of a milky blue, in which white predominates; its mornings and evenings are always bathed in mists-drowned in fogs. London smokes in the sun like a heated race-horse, or a boiling caldron, which produces those admirable effects of light and shade so well given by English artists. It is this smoke enveloping all, which softens the too great sharpness of the angles, veils the poverty of construction, lengthens the perspective, and gives an air of vagueness and mystery to the most common-place objects; by its aid, a kitchen chimney becomes an Egyptian obelisk,-a clumsy row of pillars assumes the graceful shape of a portico of Palmyra. The retail wine-merchants, so common in Paris, are replaced in London by the vendors of gin and other strong liquors. The gin-shops are generally very elegant, ornamented with abundance of gilding, and forming by their luxury a painful contrast to the poverty and misery of the class which frequents them. I saw an old woman enter one of these gin-temples, who has haunted my memory ever since. She had a bonnet on her head-but what a bonnet! It might have been white or black, yellow or purple, the original colour could no longer be recognized, and it could only be likened to a coal-skuttle. Round her wretched old carcase hung some filthy tatters, which reminded me of rags thrown over the drowned bodies in the Porte-manteau of the Morgue-only, what was much sadder, the corpse was moving. At the expiration of about a minute the old woman came out of the gin-shop; she walked as uprightly as a Swiss soldier, her shrivelled figure seemed to have been re-animated, a hectic flush had spread over her withered the cheek, and as she passed near me she cast on me a dark, profound, fixed look-but a look from which thought was banished. At a few paces distant I saw another spectacle of the same kind; a grey-haired old man, already intoxicated, whose torn hat had rolled into the gutter, was singing snatches of some merry song, accompanied by uncouth and frantic gesticulation. How many equally wretched hasten thus to drink of the waters of Lethe under the name of gin! Yet these two specimens of London misery were nothing in comparison to those I afterwards saw at St. Giles's, the Irish quarter of the town. St. Giles's is only a few steps from Oxford Street and Piccadilly; you pass at once from the most glittering wealth to the lowest depths of poverty. There are to be seen infants covered with rags and filth, rolling lazily in the gutters; great girls with matted locks, and naked legs and feet, staring wildly at a passing stranger; and figures of all ages, on whose haggard and cadaverous countenances famine has written its terrible lines. This is the reverse of the medal of all civilization immense fortunes are accounted for by frightful miseries; for one to devour so much, it is necessary that many fast; and no where is this disproportion more observable than in England. To have gold is so visibly the greatest merit there, that the poor English despise themselves, and humbly bow beneath the arrogance of the wealthy. Surely the English, who descant so much on the idols of the Papists, would do well to remember that the golden calf is the most abominable of all idols, and that which demands the most sacrifices. The The town had begun to stir-workmen, with their white aprons tucked up at the waist, were proceeding to their work; butchers' boys carried meat along in wooden trays; omnibuses, succeeding each other without any interval, rolled rapidly past. All this activity of locomotion contrasted oddly with the imperturbable, cold, phlegmatic expression of countenance of those who were hastening on. English run, yet have not the air of being in a hurry: they keep on straight, like cannon-balls-not even stopping if they are hurt, or turning to make an apology if they hurt another: even the women walk at a pace that would do honour to grenadiers marching to an assault. London covers an enormous surface; the houses are low, the streets large, the squares numerous and wide; St. James's Park, Hyde Park, and Regent's Park, occupy an immense space; people must therefore make haste, or they will not reach their destination till the next day. The Thames is to London what the boulevart is to Paris, the principal line of communication. Only on the Thames, instead of omnibuses, there are small steam-boats, in going by which you see pass before you, as in a moving panorama, the picturesque banks of the river. You may thus admire the three vast iron arches of Southwark Bridge, the Ionian columns which give so elegant an aspect to Blackfriars Bridge, the solid Doric of Waterloo Bridge, assuredly the most beautiful in the world. You will admire the gigantic cupola of St. Paul's, which rises above an ocean of roofs: from Westminster Bridge, you will discover the ancient Abbey of that name; and beyond it, you will find the perspective finely closed by Vauxhall Bridge. All of those VOL. XCVI. 21 |