[-331-]
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ILLUMINATIONS
So short-lived is human interest in any event that the great day of the
Jubilee having passed, the restoration of London to its former state began
immediately. On Wednesday morning four-wheeled cabs were drawn up in front of
lodgings everywhere, from Maida Vale to the borders of Belgravia; these were
loaded with luggage, and men, women and children, hurrying out, betook
themselves to the country and the provincial towns whence the attractions of
London had drawn them. Hansoms returned to their customary tariff, and the
omnibus, once more "full up," accepted pennies where it had extorted
shillings. The price of food had gone down - a prodigious over-supply having
been laid in by the green-grocers and restaurants, tons of which had been wasted
or sold for a trifle; and the placard "Apartments" was once more
displayed in windows along Baker street, throughout the dreary regions of
Bloomsbury and in plebeian Bayswater. Scaffoldings and stands melted like frost
in the sunshine, and St. Martin's in the Field, the Athenaeum and other clubs
came forth from their temporary eclipse. One realized, as never before, the real
comfort of ordinary, humdrum life. For ten days London had been the most
uncomfortable city on the globe. During that time the British subject, no matter
how polite or amiable by nature, snapped if you looked at him. The most
characteristic figure I had seen that week was a stout woman of fifty, crimson
and perspiring, who climbed into an Atlas' bus [-332-] Piccadilly
Circus. She sat down, drawing deep stertorous breaths, and looked at her fellow
passengers with the expression of one deeply injured; her bonnet was tipped over
one ear and her umbrella handle had been snapped off short; she had simply
endeavored to make her way across Piccadilly Circus and reached the distant
curbstone with rent garments, straining seams and bursting buttons, bristling
and disheveled and indignant.
The illuminations on the evening of the 22d promised
to be in keeping with the pageant of the day; but every one anticipated a crowd,
through which it would be almost impossible to move, and postponed seeing the
show until the evening of Wednesday. Thus, on the first evening, while the
streets and railway stations were comparatively free, the evening following,
locomotion became not only difficult but almost impossible. It meant getting
over the ground inch by inch, and resistance to incessant and painful elbowing,
pushing and prodding. The rich drove in cabs and carriages; the poor and the
robust patronized the omnibus, which had been excluded from the usual
thoroughfares on the evening of the 22d, and there were thousands who
were courageous enough to attempt going on foot. The more rational and discreet,
those of moderate means and of ordinary strength, remained quietly within doors,
devoutly thankful, after all the burly burly and excitement, for a quiet retreat
where they might be shut away from the sight of human beings and the tumult of
human activity.
I had promised the housekeeper, who was not able to leave
home on Tuesday, that she should see the illuminations on Wednesday evening
under my guidance and protection, and this is a true narrative of our
adventures.
We set out at nine o'clock, at which hour it was still broad
daylight, to take the Atlas' bus at the "Princess of Wales" to ride
through Baker street, Oxford and Regent [-333-] streets
and Whitehall, over Westminster bridge, through the East End and back again -
the route that I had taken on Monday evening previous. We supposed that we would
be amongst the last, having given the crowd time to set out in advance of us,
but we found a great throng who had taken a like precaution, and who were also
anxiously waiting for places. Each omnibus, departing at intervals of a few
minutes, was filled to its utmost capacity. As it was useless to wait, we walked
a mile, or more, to meet an empty vehicle on its return, but in this scheme,
also, we had been anticipated by scores who had been moved by the same impulse.
After much delay we found one bus with just three places on top, and these our
small party were fortunate enough to secure. We were no sooner seated than up
came a Jew, very big, very loud of voice and very aggressive; he was accompanied
by his wife and half-grown daughter. A place was found for his wife, but the
daughter was thrust into a seat already occupied by two persons, one of them a
mild and inoffensive woman. It occasionally happens that the outwardly mild and
inoffensive are the most dangerous when roused, and so it proved to be in this
case. The woman protested emphatically, stating that she had paid, not one fare
but two, for her seat, and that the law was being violated. This led to what the
English call a "jolly row," which brought the Jewish gentleman to the
scene of action; after seating his family he had perched out of sight, but not
out of hearing, on the steps below. He was violent and insulting, and finally
the quiet woman turned to him and asked cuttingly:
"You're a Jew, aren't you ?"
It may have been shockingly ill-bred, but she had been goaded
to desperation. The question only increased the man s fury.
"A Jew! A Jew!" he screamed, "and what are you?
[-334-] An atheist, I suppose; yes, an atheist!
You look like an atheist. I'm not ashamed of my religion; you are of
yours, for I see you won't tell what it is. The Lord Mayor of London is a Jew,
perhaps you don't know that; yes, the Lord Mayor of London is a Jew, and so was
Lord Beaconsfield, and I don't suppose you ever heard of Moses Montefiore."
The woman replied to this harangue with, "stop your
abuse or I'll give you in charge."
This kindled the man's wrath afresh and when the conductor
was appealed to he said angrily:
"O, 'ush your row!"
By this time a third person intervened, and the indignant Jew
was induced to place his daughter beside his wife, to which that lady greatly
objected, and for a time hostilities were suspended. There was also on top a
party of country folk from Derbyshire, and they huddled together and looked on
at the quarrel, the shrieking Jew and the indefatigable woman who maintained her
rights, with the dazed and frightened expression of sheep peering through a gap
in a hedge at a rough and tumble fight between two collies.
These people the Jew endeavored by every means to oust from
their seats that he might get possession of them, shouting out that "they'd
have to pay a shilling more when they got to Orchard street." This
statement was promptly contradicted by the other passengers who were disposed to
protect the country people, and a renewal of difficulties for a moment seemed
imminent. Finally with this lively prologue to the evening's melodrama, which
threatened a tragedy before it was finished, we rolled away.
The sight was a pretty one, but it hardly equalled our
expectations; the trees in the gardens through St. John's wood and Regent Park
were strung with many-colored fairy lamps; here and there were the familiar and
unvaried [-335-] designs; coronets, the royal or
imperial monogram, the national coat of arms; the crest of the Prince of Wales
interwoven with the shamrock, rose and thistle. Japanese lanterns were suspended
from balconies, and from swaying and sagging lines thrown across the roadway,
and, mingled with these, were flags and flowers, effective by daylight, but
which were dimmed in the more brilliant glow of the illuminations. Drapers'
shops on Oxford street were lighted from foundation to cornice, gas and
electricity both being employed. The gas jets were extinguished by every puff of
wind and men were required continually to relight them. There had been a long
discussion in the newspapers as to the respective merits of gas and electricity
prior to the Jubilee, the general verdict being in favor of gas as "less
glaring;" but the trouble that it gave as compared to electricity must have
made it apparent that nothing equals the soft, steady brilliancy of electricity.
The crush in the streets was indescribable, far greater than
on the morning of the Jubilee when the thoroughfares had been closed to traffic.
Carriages, cabs, vans, carriers' carts filled with men, women and children from
the poorer districts of London, with all the thousands of omnibuses that ply the
streets of the metropolis daily, seemed to have been massed together in an
inextricable tangle. The police, unexcited, gentle and patient, stood grouped in
the "shelters" and endeavored to take some supervision of the chaos.
Now one of them stepped briskly out of his place and seized a horse by the
bridle, or backed him until he reared on his haunches, and this summary act was
followed by the noise of backing vehicles which sounded like the switching of an
empty freight train. Through the snarl of wheels and hoofs and tossing manes,
thousands of people passed on foot; scores of men and half-grown boys, following
each other in single file. Occasionally there would be a line, each man with his
hands extended and [-336-] resting on the shoulders
of the man in front of him - files that were roughly torn apart by the watchful
police. Scores of fool-hardy women had brought with them broods of babies that
could scarcely toddle. It was pleasant, though, to see that even these were
helped and cared for; nobody reproached the poor mothers or told them that they
should have remained at home; the long-suffering "bobby" made way for
them; a big hobbledehoy of a lad, or a gentleman in patent leather shoes and
evening dress trying to reach his club, would pick up the children and pass them
along like so many buckets at a village fire. The sidewalks were packed solidly
from wall to curbstone, and they accommodated only a fraction of the thousands
that overflowed into the road among the traffic. Our omnibus crawled along
almost imperceptibly, with long and frequent halts; and we were nearly two hours
in going from Oxford street to Trafalgar square. Here the crowd was more
immovable than ever; we had quite forgotten that it was a "command
night" at the opera; that all the visiting Princes and potentates would
appear, a spectacle such as Covent Garden had not witnessed for many a decade.
Down Pall Mall, to Marlborough House and Buckingham Palace the streets were
closed, the right of way being reserved for royalty and their guests.
We could not, of course, cross the square, but worked our way
by a devious and unfamiliar route in the neighborhood of the Metropole hotel to
Westminster bridge. The larger hotels, which were patronized by Americans, were
one dazzling sheet of colored lamps, row upon row, of red, white and blue. At
Westminster bridge there was another dismal blockade; it was impossible to get
through it, so the driver turned and made his way back to Trafalgar square. Here
there was still no thoroughfare, although by this time it was half past eleven
o'clock, [-337-] so the horses' heads were turned
again in the direction of the Parliament building, near which we were caught
once more, and the exciting scenes of Oxford street were re-enacted. The line of
traffic had closed behind us and stretched interminably in front, as solid as a
stone wall. It was somewhat appalling; we knew we were there to remain until the
mass in front of us moved, as it did, step only at a time; there was no going
back, and little hope of going forward, and we waited at a dead standstill with
what patience we could muster for three quarters of an hour. Near the omnibus
was a carriage with a pair of magnificent horses; one of them was terrified by
the blaze of lights from the illuminations over the door of the Metropolitan
railway station, and trembled in every nerve, tossing its head in anguish, with
nostrils dilated, breast and forehead flecked with foam. As in Oxford street,
pedestrians wound in and out, jumped and crawled among hoofs and wheels, all
preserving their good nature and self-control. Here and there, through that
jumble of vehicles and quadrupeds, came the shrill notes of the latest music
hall ballad, sung or whistled by wayfaring gamins, in which they were joined
from time to time by the impatient prisoners on the top of the omnibuses. When a
space in front of us was comparatively clear and the wheels began to turn once
more, all hope of getting across the bridge being abandoned, we were taken quite
out of the ordinary route, down Victoria street, past the Colonial offices, the
Army and Navy stores--hotels with scarlet uniformed sentries at the entrance
betokening the presence of envoys or of royalty-and all outvying each other in
the brilliancy and profusion of their flags, lights and garlands. From Victoria
street we turned into Buckingham Palace road and here was another blockade,
quite as hopeless as that from which it had taken us nearly an hour to get free
in Westminster. The driver was tired, cross, and [-338-] as
it soon became apparent, far from sober. He turned the distracted horses with a
jerk, the huge omnibus swayed and reeled, the wheels grating against the
curbstone as it bounced upon the sidewalk and jolted down again. That we were
saved from a frightful catastrophe was due alone to an interposing providence.
Most of us were silent, but I gave a gasp and held fast to the seat in front of
me with the clutch of despair. One woman went off into shrieking hysterics but
was brought to her senses by a stern rebuke and vigorous and painful pinching
from the woman behind her, who emphasized her pinchings with the angry
exhortation:
"Keep quiet; behave yourself; how dare you!"
and, thus disciplined, the refractory one held her arms close to her sides,
sobbing and sighing, but obedient. And then began a ride which none of us is
likely ever to forget. We went bounding and jolting back over a part of the
route by which we had come, grazing the curbstones and making the shortest
possible turns around corners into Eton square; from Sloane street to
Knightsbridge, from Knightsbridge to West Kensington, thence to Notting-hill
Gate, to Paddington and finally to Westbourne Grove and up to the door of the
Jew who had succeeded in getting the Derbyshire people to alight in Piccadilly
Circus, and find their way as best they could to St. Pancreas railway station,
while he disposed his family about him in their seats, from which he had finally
ousted them. This gave him a place at the driver's elbow, and unknown to the
rest of us, he engineered the omnibus through the semi-darkness of unfrequented
streets, far from the scene of the Jubilee rejoicings. It was no merit of his
that we reached home unharmed and alive. London bus drivers are, as a rule
experts; ours was both drunk and stupid, but we were absolutely at his mercy. A
cab could not have been hired under two guineas an hour, and in this
out-of-the-way re-[-339-]gion, at one o'clock in
the morning-for it was now long past midnight - we would have been charged twice
that sum. We were far from all the known omnibus routes and had no choice but to
stick to the dangerous vehicle and the crazy driver, trusting to luck. The
greater part of the police force were detailed to the crowded centers and we
could not appeal to them - at least not then. Finally we stopped at a public
house; three or four of the men alighted, went into the place and slaked their
thirst; the Jew returning with a glass of beer for the driver and a glass of
sherry for his wife. This was consumed easily and leisurely, and, after the
lapse of twenty minutes or more, the men returned and off we went again. We
scraped curbstones, bounced into holes and out again, another perilous turn on
the sidewalk was made with a narrower escape from capsizing than before, then we
retraced our course and turned again. We were now in streets where an omnibus
had apparently never been seen, and roused by the unusual rumble of wheels
people came to their windows, aroused from sleep, and peered out wonderingly. A
man and woman among the passengers on top had been ominously silent; but the man
now rose in his might.
" Ere, you!" he shouted to the conductor; "I
want to know where you're taikin' us. We want to go to Baiker street."
"Yes," his wife shrieked confirming this sudden
speech. "We got in at Victoria's - miles away - and we told you
that we wanted to go to Baiker street."
We were then quite as far from Baker street as we were from
Victoria, and we sympathized with the rage of the screaming woman.
"This is a pretty way to treat honest folks I must say-
tell 'em you'll taike em to Baiker street and bring 'em to Paddington. Oh you'll
pay for this lemme tell you !" and [-340-] the
savage snarl with which thi indefinite threat concluded was blood-curdling.
The conductor, who, no doubt, had also been subsidized by the
Jew, came running up on top and endeavored to pacify her; but she paid no
attention, and her husband, recognizing her superior fluency, let her do the
most of the remonstrating, although he had no feeble command of language
himself. The woman went on in a steady crescendo:
"You told us you'd let us hoff at Baiker street,
and ere we are at Paddington, all the way from Victoria at this hour in the
morning."
The man interpolated in a deep bass, with awful conviction
and solemnity:
"It was that glass of beer that done it. I saw 'em. I
saw that man and woman on the front seat bargaining to be taiken 'ome. It was
that glass of beer that done it."
He repeated the last charge with concentrated acrimony and
both the conductor and the Jew were discreetly silent. Presently we turned into
a somewhat more cheerful thoroughfare which was reasonably well-lighted. On the
corner the driver's accusers spied two policemen - the first that we had sighted
since we left Trafalgar square, and the man shouted at them with a bellow that
must have roused the whole neighborhood. In fact it did, for there was a sound
of exclamations and racing feet, and even at that hour a crowd began to collect
- the belated, who, like ourselves, had been out to see the illuminations. The
driver attempted to whip up the horses and get away; he was sober enough to try
to evade the clutches of the law, but the police called to him, ordered him to
stop, and then ran after us. The driver, thus coerced, stopped the horses, and
both he and the conductor were obliged to come down from their places, join the
officers in the road and give an account of themselves, and they were speedily
reinforced [-341-] by the husband of the irate
woman. The guilty ones were closely interrogated, the conductor endeavoring to
break into the informant's story, but was ordered to keep quiet, while the crowd
closed round them in an interested circle. One of the policemen took out a small
book, entered the complaint therein, something was said as to further
investigations, names and addresses were given and we were then allowed to
proceed.
The woman, however, was not in the least pacified, she went
on and on like a Greek chorus, in monotonous reiteration:
"It was a shoime, so it was; they got on at Victoria to
be taiken to Balker street, and ere they were, goodness knows where. They got on
at Victoria and they wanted to be taiken to Baiker street, and they would be
taiken to Balker street."
The moon had now risen and threw a ghostly light over the
scene; we were in Kilbourne and the vehicle halted before an unpretentious villa
very much gone to stucco. The Jew who had bribed the driver with more than beer
I suspected, gathered his family together and descended. He had kept perfectly
still during the last uproar, but he was now safe at home and had nothing more
to fear.
"Calls herself a laidy; nice sort of a laidy she is,"
said the woman driven to madness again at the superior good fortune of the Jew
in being brought to his door.
Her husband joined in:
"You'll ear about this in the morning," he shouted,
at which the victorious Jew paused before his gate, under the lamp post, took
out his card-case and held up a bit of paste-board.
"Perhaps you'd like my card," he yelled in reply.
"Here it is, if you want it. No? Well, good-night," emphasizing the
first syllable with exasperating malice.
A very young and quiet man had slipped into the seat [-342-]
beside me during a lull in the conflict, after we had dropped most of our
passengers, and he said:
"I have missed my train to Bristol, and I cannot get
another until seven o'clock."
"Too bad!" I exclaimed sympathizingly.
"Oh, not at all," he replied, politely, "I
shall not have long to wait, now. This has been awfully amusing, don't you know.
I'll just stick to the bus and see what does happen."
This is what did happen almost immediately; the enraged woman
across the aisle stood up and cried in tones that were not to be disregarded,
addressing the conductor:
"Now, sir, taike us straight away to Baiker
street."
The conductor parleyed and protested and argued, and offered
to hire a cab and send them at his own expense.
"No sir," she replied viciously, "We goes to
Baiker street, and we goes in this bus."
The conductor gave a sigh and then surrendered; he muttered
some order to the driver which our party failed to catch, but its meaning was
immediately made clear; for the dozenth time the driver turned the tired horses
and started off in precisely the opposite direction from that in which he had
been driving.
"Now where are you going?" I, at least,
ventured to ask of the conductor.
"To Baiker street," replied the man, laconically
and sullenly.
In one brief night he had been in two rows, invited to drink
at a public house and accepted the invitation, had been given over to the police
- the vengeance of Nemesis finally overtaking him for failing to settle the Jew
in the start.
"Not with us," I declared sternly, roused also to
resistance. "Stop instantly, and let us off."
[-343-] Home was within
comfortable walking distance, for we were now in High street, Kilbourne. The
omnibus stopped again for the twentieth time, and we descended, tired, stiff,
disgusted, but thankful to be upon solid ground with no bones broken. We walked
through the deserted streets, escorted by a trio of gallant Etonians who also
declined to be taken back to "Baiker street," and the bus rattled
away, with the triumphant woman and her husband and the young man from Bristol
on top, the sole remaining passengers. Morning was coming fast when we rang the
bell and the sleepy housemaid let us in.
"I do not see how we ever reached home alive," I
remarked with a sigh of relief.
The housekeeper who was a devout Christian Scientist replied
with a conviction that admitted no argument:
"I demonstrated every step of the way!"