Saunterings | Page 7

make it pleasant the year
round.
When we passed within the hanging smoke of London town, threading
our way amid numberless railway tracks, sometimes over a road and
sometimes under one, now burrowing into the ground, and now running
along among the chimney-pots,--when we came into the pale light and
the thickening industry of a London day, we could but at once contrast
Paris. Unpleasant weather usually reduces places to an equality of
disagreeableness. But Paris, with its wide streets, light, handsome
houses, gay windows and smiling little parks and fountains, keeps up a
tolerably pleasant aspect, let the weather do its worst. But London, with
its low, dark, smutty brick houses and insignificant streets, settles down
hopelessly into the dumps when the weather is bad. Even with the sun
doing its best on the eternal cloud of smoke, it is dingy and gloomy
enough, and so dirty, after spick-span, shining Paris. And there is a
contrast in the matter of order and system; the lack of both in London is
apparent. You detect it in public places, in crowds, in the streets. The
"social evil" is bad enough in its demonstrations in Paris: it is twice as
offensive in London. I have never seen a drunken woman in Paris: I
saw many of them in the daytime in London. I saw men and women
fight in the streets,--a man kick and pound a woman; and nobody
interfered. There is a brutal streak in the Anglo-Saxon, I fear,--a
downright animal coarseness, that does not exhibit itself the other side
of the Channel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at
hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service;

but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter,
with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite,
attentive, alert,--always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,--you
learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure
that he will protect you, and give you your rights in any corner of Paris.
It does look as if he might slip that slender rapier through your body in
a second, and pull it out and wipe it, and not move a muscle; but I don't
think he would do it unless he were directly ordered to. He would not
be likely to knock you down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy
who was assaulting you.
A great contrast between the habits of the people of London and Paris
is shown by their eating and drinking. Paris is brilliant with cafes: all
the world frequents them to sip coffee (and too often absinthe), read the
papers, and gossip over the news; take them away, as all travelers know,
and Paris would not know itself. There is not a cafe in London: instead
of cafes, there are gin-mills; instead of light wine, there is heavy beer.
The restaurants and restaurant life are as different as can be. You can
get anything you wish in Paris: you can live very cheaply or very
dearly, as you like. The range is more limited in London. I do not fancy
the usual run of Paris restaurants. You get a great deal for your money,
in variety and quantity; but you don't exactly know what it is: and in
time you tire of odds and ends, which destroy your hunger without
exactly satisfying you. For myself, after a pretty good run of French
cookery (and it beats the world for making the most out of little), when
I sat down again to what the eminently respectable waiter in white and
black calls "a dinner off the Joint, sir," with what belongs to it, and
ended up with an attack on a section of a cheese as big as a bass-drum,
not to forget a pewter mug of amber liquid, I felt as if I had touched
bottom again,--got something substantial, had what you call a square
meal. The English give you the substantials, and better, I believe, than
any other people. Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good
dinner now and then. I have tried his favorite restaurant here, the
cuisine of which is famous far beyond the banks of the Seine; but I
think if he, hearty trencher-man that he was, had lived in Paris, he
would have gone to London for a dinner oftener than he came here.
And as for a lunch,--this eating is a fascinating theme,--commend me to
a quiet inn of England. We happened to be out at Kew Gardens the

other afternoon. You ought to go to Kew, even if the Duchess of
Cambridge is not at home. There is not such a park out of England,
considering