Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/620

23, 1860.] Bois de Boulogne who does these things in a more complete manner. In order not to wound his just susceptibilities, you leave him to infer your assent to that proposition, though perfectly aware that the fair equestrians of the Bois de Boulogne in its palmiest moment are no more to be compared with—may I not say what I think?—the far fairer equestrians of Rotten Row, than Piccadilly can stand comparison with those wonderful Boulevards of the French capital.

That sight is the one in London which would, as I think, most recommend itself to the appreciation of our continental friends. We certainly have nothing to show them which would strike upon the spectator’s eye like the old Place de la Concorde (I know not by what name it has been known for the last twelve months,) at Paris—with the Tuileries and the Triumphal Arch, and the Madeleine, and the former Palace of the Deputies. With all our legitimate pride about the value of our institutions, and the solid advantages derived from the labours of our Gas and Water Companies, we must in fairness admit that the position of a Frenchman in London, without friends or acquaintances, is exceedingly forlorn. His one idea is a visit to the Thames Tunnel, and when that entertainment, which at best is not of a very exciting character, is over, whither shall he turn for amusement? We are speaking, of course, of a Frenchman of respectability and character, for I suspect that continental blackguardism is more at its ease—has more elbow-room in London—than in any capital of Europe. It is removed from the daily and hourly surveillance of the police, and festers, and ferments, and conspires, and invents new forms of rascality in its own way. In the main, however, continental blackguardism in London lives upon itself. Continental blackguardism cannot master the difficulties of the English language. Those evil-eyed, sinister-looking men whom you see hanging about the streets in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, and behind Regent Street, prey upon each other. They have secrets about each other. They farm each other, as it were, and each one contrives to get a shilling or two out of his neighbour in some marvellous manner which has always been a mystery to me. One would rather not inquire what is the ultimate source of their gains.

The police will tell you that there is almost always to be found in London a considerable number of foreigners who are engaged in various schemes for forging the notes of Foreign Banks, and of the Continental Trading Companies and Associations. The conductor of an enterprise of this kind, however, would not be much seen in the classical regions of Leicester Square. He would live quietly up at Pentonville or Islington, and not impossibly hold himself out as a Master of Languages. He would come down-stairs to take in his own pennyworth of milk, and occasionally offer a bunch of flowers to his landlady—such a nice man! He would have his agents at Birmingham, or Sheffield, and would display the most remarkable ingenuity in carrying on his negotiations with our English mechanics, so as to baffle the investigations of the police. At last the plot is discovered. It may be from the first that Joseph Mogg and Sons, of Sheffield, had informed the police that they were in trade relations with a queer customer, and had been instructed to go on as though nothing were the matter. One fine morning a business-like looking visitor, in plain clothes, calls up at 23, Elysium Crescent, and informs M. Anatole Charpentier that the sitting magistrate at Bow Street, or the Lord Mayor, would like to have the opportunity of making his acquaintance. The authorities are somewhat importunate in their courteous anxiety for an interview. M. A. Charpentier, in point of fact, is “wanted,” and the next day the town is made aware that for six months past there has been subtle machinery at work in London for largely defrauding the Bank of St. Petersburg.

It must always be remembered that there are large colonies of foreigners—merchants and others—settled in London, and indeed, in other chief towns of England, whose lives escape scrutiny altogether, because they follow up their objects of pursuit in a very legitimate way, and consequently are never submitted to the microscopic investigations of the police. The circles in which they move are, to use a cant word, “exclusive,” and few English people are ever admitted to their friendship, or even acquaintance. There is in London, and again in Liverpool, a Greek set; in London, and again in Manchester, a German set. I know of a set of Spanish merchants resident in London and the suburbs, and amongst them the presence of an English face is quite an exception to the rule. You find, of course, at the embassies and at “The Travellers,” little knots of the corps diplomatique, who necessarily, and as part of their professional duties, mix, to a very considerable extent, in English society; but in order to arrive at the arcana of their existence, you should meet these gentlemen at the lodgings of some of their own countrymen. These are generally in streets dependent upon Portman or Cavendish Squares. You would then awake to the painful consciousness, that the praise which you had heard lavished in public by these courteous diplomatists upon the three kingdoms, and our institutions, was not quite as sincere as might have been imagined. They get rid of their John-Bullisms with painful facility—and, hey presto! a little Paris or Vienna with all the prejudices, and all the cockneyisms of those great capitals, is reproduced in a moment before your astonished eyes. The Russian Embassy, before the Crimean War, used to be nearer to the mark of one of the great London houses than any other; but, since that event, both English and Russians regard each other with considerable suspicion. The English shut up their mouths,—and the Russians are too polite by half. These gentlemen, however, to do them but justice, never lose an opportunity of impressing upon your mind the good old St. Petersburg dogma, about the manifest destiny of the great Russian nation. The staple of their talk is a kind of namby-pamby mixture of sentimental philanthropy and man-of-the-worldism,—such as I suppose was talked at the Court of Catherine II. when the Polish question occupied her Majesty’s attention. If Marshal Suwarrow could have gone to a fancy ball in the character of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that would,