Page:The Galaxy (New York, Sheldon & Co.) Volume 24 (1877).djvu/156

 it which takes place in the Park, the London spectacle goes forward in the midst of ugly accessories—smoke-blackened houses, an undeveloped architecture, a dingy and hungry-looking population—but for ten weeks it overbears these things by its mass and brightness, and makes you believe that you are in the city of pleasure, and not in the city of pain. Then the flunkied chariots, with flower stacks in front, stand locked together in the genteel neighborhoods; then the admirable types of English beauty look forth with quiet eyes from the shadow of lace-fringed parasols; then the rosy women sit flushed and panting on glossy thorough-breds along the misty, red-earthed vistas of the Park; then the juvenile members of a hereditary aristocracy diffuse themselves over the slopes of Piccadilly, and excite the admiration of the passing stranger by figures which tell of rowing matches, and garments which hint at Poole.

Then, in the mansions of Mayfair and Belgravia, the window-sills are bright with wondrous tulip beds, and the thresholds and porticoes flamboyant with still more wondrous footmen; then the streets are bedizened with motley placards and the names of all the great singers, and players, and actors, and painters, confront you at every turn, with thrilling familiarity; then the amateur coaches, driven by the gentleman of leisure and heralded by the mellow horn of the scarlet-coated guard, come rattling up to the classic door of Hatchett's; then the plumes and diamonds of bare-shouldered duchesses nod at you from the gilded coaches which, in drawing-room days, are waiting to deposit their noble burden in the presence of its gracious sovereign; then, too, the Life Guards and the Blues, the "finest men" in the world, come flashing and clashing on their sable chargers from attendance on the same august personage. Then, at the hour of the vast pink sunset which filters upward so picturesquely through the hovering London exhalations, every rattling hansom contains a hurrying diner-out in a beautifully tied choker, and then, later, when the pale starlight twinkles down feebly into the dim, innumerable streets, the lines of lamp-lit broughams at the doors of houses given up to a "crush," stretch away into neighboring parishes. These are a few of the features of that external manifestation of the London "season" which I just now spoke of as impressive. No single one of them, doubtless, will seem to deserve so exalted an epithet, but such certainly is, upon a simple Western mind, the effect of their aggregation. Such a vast amount of human life, so complex a society, so powerful a body of custom and tradition stand behind them, that the spectacle becomes the most solidly brilliant, the most richly suggestive, of all great social shows.

It was not, however, of its general suggestiveness that I meant to speak in making this allusion to it. It was one of its more trivial incidents—a mere detail in that daily multiplication of visible detail which, from Easter onward, goes forward in the London streets. The pitiful old men who perambulate in portable stocks increase a hundredfold. I mean by this those ragged starvelings who are induced, by pecuniary considerations, to merge that small remnant of individuality which survives the levelling action of soot without and whiskey within in the conspicuous neutrality of advertising mediumship. We only know them as we know the tortoise, by their shell. This shell is a kind of two-sided pyramid, from which their chins emerge, and from which, from the knee downward, their legs depend. Or it might be likened to a sort of over-starched shirt, with the skirts left flying, upon the rigid bosom and back whereof the attractions of concerts and galleries are inscribed in letters of crimson and azure. The wearers stand on the street corners or stroll along the curbstone for days, weeks, and months together; though occasionally, I suppose (to carry out