Victorian England - Articles and Stories

THE LONDON SEASON.

THE LONDON SEASON.

This season is not like most others that we have known. It has afforded a practical answer to the question why we English people have selected the most beautiful time of the year for abandoning our country houses and green retreats, and burying ourselves in the heart of a noisy, dusty, stuffy, burning city. The country is not green, and the town is not hot — not half as hot as it should be for comfort. 

It is all very well to talk of the romantic aspects of Nature; but surely since last Easter we have rather desiderated cheerful rooms and bright fires and genial assemblages of hearty people, with, curtains drawn, and what is called "Nature" carefully excluded, than any tarrying by waterfalls, or coquetry at night with celestial phenomena. 

The nightingales have all suffered from sore throats: and some time back when I heard a cuckoo in Richmond Park attempting his usual monotonous call, it was done in so peevish a manner that I had not the heart to turn a four- penny-bit for luck's sake. How the people in Covent Garden have got their flowers it is difficult to say. I should rather have expected to see violets growing at Charing Cross, and primroses upon Ludgate Hill, than in the few fields and hedge-rows which it has been my misfortune to see during the last few months.

But, to speak the truth, even at ordinary times, when the terrestrial gases have not been mixed up in such universal hubbub as they have been during the last months of shipwreck, and hurricane, and deluge, when things which should be green are green, and when the ground is pied with daisies where daisies ought to be, and the white-thorns keep their fragrant appointments with the exactest punctuality, — these should rather be taken as relishes and contrasts to life in London during the London season, than as substitutes for all that London can show at such a time. With the best inclination to sympathise with all human pursuits, it is hard to see how a man, in order to employ himself most worthily, should avoid the society of his fellow men. Why should not a Londoner grow sentimental about Wardour Street as well as a Highland gentleman — I have no wish to twit him with his little peculiarities — about Glenlivat?

As I walk about the streets of London — oftentimes by night — those dull brick houses are full of echoes of past days. I could tell you how the flutings lie on the marble mantel-pieces, and where the easy-chair on which the grandfather sits must be placed because it would not fit any other part of the room. There was the kindly welcome, and the ready jest, and the little tiffs, and the large reconciliations -with the young ladies, and the plans for the coming season, and all that makes life delightful to the feelings and the senses, and now all that is quite, quite gone! 

Were I to knock at the door now, and race up the stairs as of old, Betty would be overcome, and the excellent head of the family inside would give me in charge on the suspicion of having a designagainst the great-coats and umbrellas. No poetry in London! No poetry save a man is sitting and sneezing on a swab of wet moss — a Highland piper being at hand with one of those horrid instruments of torture applied to his hard, horny lips! Why, one could write a sonnet about South Andley Street.

But if London at all times is better than any other place you could name, what is it not during the season, when every joy is at its climax, and when all your friends and acquaintances from all parts of the country, and from all parts of the continent, and from all parts of the world, come dropping in thick as gnats used to be in summer evenings — when there were summer evenings, and there were gnats. I know that some unneighbourly sort of people will have it that London is most delightful in September, when everybody is out of town, and the Hindu sweeper in Saint James's Square leaves off peddling with the unprofitable mud at his crossing, and, folding his arms across his breast, meekly gives in to Budhism.

Of course London is pleasant in September when the seat of empire is your own — but it is pleasant as sleep is after toil, or night after day. I like,as well as any man, to have the library in the club entirely to myself, and to moralise in the deserts of Old Bond Street, but human nature has also its social and its gorgeous side. I have a rich vein of duchesses in my mind, which I can open up during the London season. If ever there was a loiterer by old bookshops, and a lover of old crinkum-crankums of every kind, I am that idle, useless person.