Travels in England in 1782 | Page 6

of people who, towards evening in fine weather, resort here; our finest walks are never so full even in the midst of summer. The exquisite pleasure of mixing freely with such a concourse of people, who are for the most part well-dressed and handsome, I have experienced this evening for the first time.
Before I went to the park I took another walk with my little Jacky, which did not cost me much fatigue and yet was most uncommonly interesting. I went down the little street in which I live, to the Thames nearly at the end of it, towards the left, a few steps led me to a singularly pretty terrace, planted with trees, on the very brink of the river.
Here I had the most delightful prospect you can possibly imagine. Before me was the Thames with all its windings, and the stately arches of its bridges; Westminster with its venerable abbey to the right, to the left again London, with St. Paul's, seemed to wind all along the windings of the Thames, and on the other side of the water lay Southwark, which is now also considered as part of London. Thus, from this single spot, I could nearly at one view see the whole city, at least that side of it towards the Thames. Not far from hence, in this charming quarter of the town, lived the renowned Garrick. Depend upon it I shall often visit this delightful walk during my stay in London.
To-day my two Englishmen carried me to a neighbouring tavern, or rather an eating-house, where we paid a shilling each for some roast meat and a salad, giving at the same time nearly half as much to the waiter, and yet this is reckoned a cheap house, and a cheap style of living. But I believe, for the future, I shall pretty often dine at home; I have already begun this evening with my supper. I am now sitting by the fire in my own room in London. The day is nearly at an end, the first I have spent in England, and I hardly know whether I ought to call it only one day, when I reflect what a quick and varied succession of new and striking ideas have, in so short a time, passed in my mind.

CHAPTER III
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London, 5th June.
At length, dearest Gedike, I am again settled, as I have now got my trunk and all my things from the ship, which arrived only yesterday. Not wishing to have it taken to the Custom House, which occasions a great deal of trouble, I was obliged to give a douceur to the officers, and those who came on board the ship to search it. Having pacified, as I thought, one of them with a couple of shillings, another came forward and protested against the delivery of the trunk upon trust till I had given him as much. To him succeeded a third, so that it cost me six shillings, which I willingly paid, because it would have cost me still more at the Custom House.
By the side of the Thames were several porters, one of whom took my huge heavy trunk on his shoulders with astonishing ease, and carried it till I met a hackney coach. This I hired for two shillings, immediately put the trunk into it, accompanying it myself without paying anything extra for my own seat. This is a great advantage in the English hackney coaches, that you are allowed to take with you whatever you please, for you thus save at least one half of what you must pay to a porter, and besides go with it yourself, and are better accommodated. The observations and the expressions of the common people here have often struck me as peculiar. They are generally laconic, but always much in earnest and significant. When I came home, my landlady kindly recommended it to the coachman not to ask more than was just, as I was a foreigner; to which he answered, "Nay, if he were not a foreigner I should not overcharge him."
My letters of recommendation to a merchant here, which I could not bring with me on account of my hasty departure from Hamburgh, are also arrived. These have saved me a great deal of trouble in the changing of my money. I can now take my German money back to Germany, and when I return thither myself, refund to the correspondent of the merchant here the sum which he here pays me in English money. I should otherwise have been obliged to sell my Prussian Fredericks-d'or for what they weighed; for some few Dutch dollars which I was obliged to part with before I got this credit they only gave me eight shillings.
A foreigner has here nothing to fear from being pressed