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ABOUT LONDON
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.
It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun
on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the
first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human
nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our
depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our
sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of
innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow
of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about
"Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush
that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you by the
hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks."
We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King "Your
Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that
name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this.
It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not
repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the
king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between
the railings, and breathe the pure, health--giving air of the country and
of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend
upon parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his
vehicle. I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the
edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie." I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can
find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has
built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has
uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked
across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and
whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert
memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the
existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of
obscurity.]
The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding.
I have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it.
I revere that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean
a book is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in
Great Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much
complained of by publishers.] And then every day that author goes there
to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work.
And what a touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor,
careworn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading--room cabbaging
sermons for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.
Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always
to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak. I collar a citizen, and I
think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him
how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and
sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn.
I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea
where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say:
"How far is it to Charing Cross?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he
goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it, is from the
sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. But I am
trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and
historical reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies.
'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it. The name
of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and
the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who
came among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and
gave him welcome and a home--Artemus Ward. Asking that you will join me,
I give you his memory. |
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