by Leigh Hunt (?; uncredited).
Originally published in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (William Tait) vol.3 #15 (Jun 1833).
Though steam and horse-flesh have of late years wrought wonders in lessening the distance between Babylonian London and the Provinces, and bringing into intercommunicating proximity raw, ravenous, riotous, darling, country cousins, with their better-groomed and more highly favoured metropolitan kinsfolk,—though shoals of ruddy-faced unsophisticated creatures of all ages and either sex are hourly being poured forth from long stages, short stages, and vehicles, strange of figure and various of name, who, with eyes of twenty visions' power, and mouths cavernously open, incredible of swallow, gloat upon the great wen, and the marvels that therein lie,—there are, nevertheless, many thousands, (and it is a painful reflection to the humane,) very many thousands, who have never yet beheld the one, or conceived the brain-bewildering wonders of the other. Some dim, shadowy, confused notion, may now and then flit through their muddy sensoriums, from the imperfect narration of a prodigy pithily despatched in the columns of a town newspaper; but as to the formation of an understandable image of the subject-matter thereof, their minds are as innocent as sucking doves. This is indeed lamentable; and well may provincial captives inveigh in the bitterness of their galled spirit against the dog-in-the-manger selfishness of a million and half of fortune-favoured souls, when not one among their number can be found generous enough to declare in minute, clear, intelligible particularity, some of the miraculous things with which they yearn to be made acquainted. Who, for instance, has not heard of (without having seen) the Industrious Fleas,—(was there ever an indolent one?)—the Linwood tapestries—the Tower armoury—the Theatres—the Exhibitions—the myriad Sights, in short, which, their name being Legion, baffle enumeration; and yet what of either is known to our country exiles? What has been said or sung didactically thereanent for their edification? Nothing, positively nothing! If ignorance be bliss, (and, abstractedly considered, we are far from saying that it is not,) then surely thrice blessed must they be in very sooth.
Yet it would be unjust to let the far-away afflicted cultivate the belief that their London friends are reckless of their happiness either. The indifference is only apparent, not real—a way of theirs simply! They are up to their eyes in "business;" and if they witness any of the thousand-and-one wonders which live, and move, and have their being within the metropolitan dominions, with a view to edulcorate the gloomy hours of those who are pining away in distant regions, it is done with a most thrifty economy of time. They are ready and willing, nay, anxious to impart all they have seen or learned for the gratification of others; but the intelligence must be confined within the strictest rules of conciseness: not one useless line must be allowed in the narration—all that is necessary, with relation to the fact,—no more!
The London press is up to its neck in this kind of "business." It is a part of its duty to proclaim all it knows; but as with wit, so is it with the press—brevity is its very soul. In its hurry-skurry movements it is compelled to take for granted that much will be supposed of course, and much, therefore, is accordingly left for inference. If it tells you that "Messrs. Something and Somebody's Steam Omnibus made a successful trial of its powers yesterday from Bromptun to Piccadilly, and appeared to answer the expectation of the Proprietors," enough has been said; not one word of mention is made of the thousand crowds which lined the road, the bustle, the shouts, the din, the dust, the thronged houses, the myriad pleased and anxious faces gazing upon the novel centre of attraction; the cries of the pie-men, the groans of the injured of limb, the chase of the pick-pockets, the fury of the police, and their sconce-cracking indiscriminating truncheons, all severally helping to make up the enlivening scene. If it announces the sailing-match on the Thames that "came off" on Monday when the Saucy Sally Yacht won the "Cup" by two boats' length, it never hints at the splendid spectacle of thronged bridges, crowded wharfs, the river peopled with funnies, wherries, and "craft of all degree," gliding, and shooting, and curvetting about the stream, from the Red-house, Battersea, to Temple Stairs; the fire of the guns, the streaming pennons, the punt-leads of tailors, and timber-yarders full of fun, fight, and frolic; the music, the millings, the upsettals, the duckings, and the drownings incident to the occasion. If it describe the execution of some murderous vagabond who kicked his spirit off at Newgate this morning at eight, it is silent on the numerous attendance of professional friends to witness the appalling event, the oranges devoured, the rotten apples and other missiles sent flying from group to group, the ladies, "well-dressed females," at the windows, the thousand-voiced murmuring of the dense mass below, the joke, the horse-laugh, the love.making, the sheriffs, the show, the winks of the "knowing ones" as they "draw the wipes" beneath the gallows, and the cheers which resound if the rascal "shows pluck," flings his shoes among the multitude, and dies like a "true cove." If a fire takes place and some half-dozen houses go by the wall, nothing farther is said than that happily no lives were lost, and that the damage is estimated at so much; not a word about the awful magnificence of the sheeted flames, the lurid streets, the crackling timbers, the huge masses of smoke rolling into the sky, the shrieks of the women, the roar of the firemen, the rattle of the engines, the galloping of the horses, the bets offered and taken of their names, and the number of minutes and seconds before they will be "in play," before that stack of chimneys or this wall shall tumble, or the next house shall "take;" the flooded streets, the horrible thump-thump of the engine-pumps, the furniture flung from the house-tops, the hiss of fire and water as they mingle, the crash of falling roofs, the momentary darkness, and the blaze again. All these several matters are left for supposition as of course, and no useless verbiage is spilled in detailing such commonplace adjuncts.
We know that if a chimney take fire or a donkey casts his shoe in the country, there is a commotion which spreads from the smithy to the rectory in no time. The Editor of the weekly paper in the next county town, writes a leader on the subject for his ensuing publication, and the event in all its pomp of circumstance, becomes food for minute discussion for several days afterwards. Now, in London, (and it may well seem strange to strangers,) events of similar, nay, of even greater importance are occurring in every street, in every hour, all day and night long; and the difficulty is in selecting the most astonishing of all the astonishing circumstances which are thus constantly happening. But there is a difficulty beyond this, for the paragraph-mongers in the daily prints, are compelled not only to be of nice discrimination in their choice, but to be choice in the manner of their chronicling: they must condense their æriform volumes of intelligence into the closely-packed fluid drop of sheer "notice." Out of an infinity of astounding particulars, they are obliged by stern necessity to confine themselves to the bare fact in all its nudity, not out of any illiberal laconicism, but from sheer indispensable necessity. The London people have a most affectionate regard for their provincial friends: but their love allows of no extraneous display, no redundancy of words foreign to the insulated fact; they will do all that lies in their power to serve their absent brethren consistently with breviloquence, but really if they crave for discursive particularities, they must come and see for themselves.
A man may be a very proper host, and yet a man of business for all that. He may load his table with all the delicious viands which the four quarters of the world can furnish, but still have no spare time to lavish in the courtesy of idle talk. He will plant you in a region of goodly substantials, for the appeasement of an appetite all but insatiable, but you must eat for yourself and expect no waste words from him in urging their daintiness. So is it with the habitants of Cockaigne, in their extremity of love for those who dwell in the remote parts of the land. Generous and noble-minded to a fault, they prepare in due season a splendid repast to which all may come and feed to very repletion if they list. See what spring-time effects?—that period when the presence of country-folk is more than ordinarily rife in the "city of the world." Have not the very wonders of the heavens and the earth, and the waters under the earth, been ransacked from far and near, as it were, for their especial behoof? Are not giants, leviathans, mummies, mermaidens, copper-mines, catacombs, fossil remains span-and-a-half high, dwarfs, wax-work, cork-work, paper-work, glass-work, all, in short, that nature has distorted, or art can fashion in the shape of "sights," laid bare for the amazement of those denizens of the wilderness, who in the spring-time are prone to sojourn in this seventh-heaven of the earth, for some brief never-to-be-forgotten fortnight of existence? Are there not Colosseums, Dioramas, Panoramas, Physioramas, Cosmoramas, and amas in variety astounding, in attraction irresistible, and in number numberless. Did not Sir Christopher Wren erect that stupendous curiosity-shop, St. Paul's, with its whispering gallery, ball and cross, for the main admiration and inspection of spring visiters (for no citizen that we ever heard knows any thing beyond its exterior)? Did not the great fire destroy one-third of London a century and half ago, simply that the monument might be raised for the wonderment of the country-curious? Were not Waterloo, Southwark, and the new London Bridges thrown across the Thames for the self-same object? Does not that awful functionary, the Lord Mayor, ride in his state coach of gilt and gingerbread for the sole similar purpose? Are not the courts of Aldermen and Common Council, at this very moment, about to knock down whole forests of houses, and lay waste multitudes of streets, lanes, alleys, and rents; and for a trifling cost of some hundreds of thousands of pounds, knock up a magnificent entrance into their most ancient and honourable city, and all for the solitary object of dazzling and dumbfoundering those who periodically come like shadows so depart?
Surely, then, no reasonable condemnation can be established against Cockneys on the score of illiberality or uncharitableness towards the inhabitants of regions remote. The complaint is referable rather to that ever-restless, insatiate, indomitable spirit of inquisitivenes, which may be considered as one of the prime attributes of man, whether he dwells in the city or the desert. Eternally on the pry, he is never contented until he sees the strings that move the puppets; and, though bitter experience must have often assured him that dissected pleasures can charm no more, yet is peace no longer his, until he analyzes and unravels their inmost structure. How beautiful it is, to gaze upon the deep blue ocean, and watch the onward progress of the distant sail gently and placidly gliding through the waters "like a thing of life;" but how any thing but beautiful it is to be upon its deck amidst tar and cordage, and other unpoetic images, with a soul unattuned to nautical nastiness, and a stomach unused to a "dance on the rocky wave!" How pleasant it is to "sit before the curtain" of old Drury or the Garden, and rivet one's eyes upon the stage, the scenery, the actors, their gorgeous apparel, and the glittering display of the crowded magnificence and spectacle brought within the field of our astonished vision; but how any thing but fascinating are the scenes behind the scenes! the tinsel and Dutch gilt, the oil and brick-dust cheeks, the rude bustle, the perilous discourtesies of candle-snuffers, scene-shifters, and other important artisans; heroines of maidenly purity, winking at double entendre; emperors discussing pots of Barclay's double X, and chivalrous knights tossing a ha'penny for a supper of beef-steaks and onion sauce! Magic illusion, merging into mockery the most degrading and pitiable, and philosophic man sunk into the buffoon! Thus, alike is it, whether based on nature or on art, human happiness was never meant for microscopic examination; pleasure may not be crucible-ised. This is mournful, and true as it is mournful; yet, wise or witless, we all to a man engage ourselves upon these inquisitorial researches, and so far the folly is sanctified by its universality. The truth is, whatever in life ranges under the mystification of secrecy, is the object of busy inquiry; concealment goads our curiosity, and reckless of cost or consequence, we are irresistibly impelled to explore the mystery of all hidden things, whether mighty or minute.
This passionate thirst after information upon matters not within the immediate sphere of our present knowledge, happens to be attended by an equally passionate impatience at all existing impediments; and accordingly most of us are wont to wax over-much irascible, and to thunder forth our spleen, at every supposable obstacle to the gratification of our craving. It is not, therefore, very difficult to account for the ungentle mutterings against the metropolitan public by their country brethren, for ill-naturedly withholding the required tea-table tittle-tattle intelligence upon those sources of enjoyment called the "Sights of London," which the comparatively few possess to the exclusion of the many.
And we have been led into these profound and erudite reflections, by an intention which has suddenly moved us to indulge that portion of our multitudinous readers, whose ignorance is consequent upon their remoteness from "the great emporium of the world," with an occasional gossip (just as caprice may prick us) on some of these subjects; such as the Exhibitions, the Theatres, the Houses of Parliament, the Lions of the hour generally; what they are like, how they are managed, the manner of their doings; and to hold, in short, a regular, garrulous, babbling chit-chat "all about them." We see no earthly reason, if this species of information be covetable, why, we being willing, they nothing loth, it should be withheld: and it shall not.
So, as we have just done whiling away our morning hours there, let us begin with the Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours.