by R S Surtees
The best time to visit London undoubtedly is between the middle of June and the end of July. You are almost sure of fine settled summer weather at this time, and a month’s fine weather is better than six weeks of unsettled weather when ladies may be confined for a third of the time to the house. The best fêtes, the best fruit and flower shows, the best balls, the best picnics, the best band-days, the best water-parties, the best white-bait dinners, the fullest parks and gardens, are all at this time of year. Added to which, you may reasonably go with a summer wardrobe only, which you cannot safely do at an earlier period. Let us, then, suppose this to be your season for going; and instead of arranging to stay so long a time, arrange to stay so much money, and endeavour to get as much amusement as you can without either wasting it or stinting your enjoyment for the purpose of saving; and if you deduct what it would cost you to live at home, and do not charge for clothes and things that you would necessarily get whether you went to London or not, it will resolve itself into the mere travelling expenses and rent, sight-seeing, the extra price of provisions, and the expenses of getting about. We will now endeavour to assist your economical enjoyment.
LUGGAGE
is often a perplexing point with paterfamilias. One would wonder how people contrived in former days to get themselves and their wants into a stage-coach or a carriage and pair, so greatly have our wants expanded with railway times. It is not now the carrying but the paying for it that forms the difficulty; and twenty shillings is soon run away with for extra luggage by express train. In going to London it may be well to remember that as it is the real place for choice and fashion, it is no use taking antiquated garments that are sure to be laid aside as soon as you get there. The better plan is to have such things as can be ordered without inspection, to be ready against you arrive — as, for instance, papa’s hat, coats, boots, shoes, stockings, &c.
If, notwithstanding this precaution, the luggage is still likely to be onerous, pack all the heavy articles into one box and, a day or two before you go yourselves, send them by goods train, directed to the care of any friend or tradesman; or, if a total stranger, to be left till called for at the station luggage-office.
If, however, you feel disposed to risk overweight, have a few luggage-labels ready directed in your pocket, headed “GOODS TRAIN,” to be affixed on any packages containing articles that you will not want immediately, in case the lynx-eyed porters begin hinting and whispering about having your luggage weighed. This is better than contravening the salutary railway regulation of not paying servants. After money, luggage-labels are the greatest conducers to comfort in travelling. Leather or parchment directions are the best for carpet bags. Cards are apt to come off. Direct with a large initial as
“T”
for Tomkinson, which will save trouble at the end of the journey, as the porters will catch the “T” in half the time they will take to spell the “Tomkinson.” Besides, it gives you the chance of being taken for ex-Lord Chancellor Truro, or lord anybody else whose name begins with a “T.” If your packages are numerous, which if a family man they are pretty sure to be, number them thus: —
1 — to 40 inclusive 2 — to 40 inclusive 3 — to 40 inclusive and make a list of the general contents of each; by which means you will be able to tell at a glance whether it contains Lady Truro’s trinkets or Tommy’s toys.
Have such things as you will require on the night of your arrival in separate bags, so that you need not disturb the bulk of the luggage until you have settled in your lodgings.
Speaking of travelling generally, it is well, if you can, to avoid holiday and great exclusion train times, as there is always more or less confusion on the lines; also write to the station-master a day or two before you want a horse-box or carriage-truck, as these are not always to be had at the moment. We will now suppose you
AT THE DEPARTURE STATION.
Here let some one keep a sharp look-out on your luggage while you take your tickets; carry the tickets of the whole party in your glove or waistcoat pocket, to be ready to show whenever they are asked for. Always anticipate an asking. Hold the tickets like a hand at cards, so that they may easily be counted. Thus you will help to accelerate the journey. If the train comes through you must take such seats as are vacant when it arrives, unless you have interest with the station-master to secure you a carriage from the starting-place, or have one ready to attach when the train arrives. A glove, a book, or anything left on a seat denotes that it is taken. Take yours that way.
See your luggage put on the roof of the carriage you occupy, and book the number of the carriage (which is often in a very indistinct place about the wheels), or you may have difficulty in finding it if you get out after the train is lengthened. The seats with the back to the engine are the warmest and least exposed, but at some stations (York, for instance) they reverse the engine, and what goes in head comes out tail. Invalids should note this and change accordingly.
It is well to have a newspaper — or, say, this book — in your hand to resort to in case tiresome people will talk — a purpose for which railway travelling was never intended. If you buy the ‘Times’ at starting you may barter it for the ‘Post,’ the ‘Post’ for the ‘Chronicle,’ and so on at the different stations as you proceed, till you have read all the papers of the day for the price of one. Do not buy a ‘Bradshaw’ unless you want a headache, but buy the guide of the particular line upon which you are going to travel, as for instance the Great Northern time-table for the Great Northern line, and so on. They are always to be had at the station bookstalls.
Carry your own provisions; thus you can dine when you are hungry instead of when the railway directors think you ought to be. Chickens cut up and tongue sliced, with bread, biscuits, cakes and so on are most convenient. Don’t forget the salt. Buy sandwiches if you do buy.
The quickest express generally gives time for drinking, but if you don’t like getting out of the carriage you can add sherry and water, or brandy and water, to the stock. Ask how long the train stops before you alight, and on no account attempt to alight before it stops.
If travelling singly it is well not to enter a carriage containing an evident party, but rather put up with a seat elsewhere. Should any one, however, do so by you, make way for him at once by clearing your wraps and things off the spare seat, and do not treat him as an intruder.
Railway rugs are much in vogue for travelling, but a shepherd’s plaid or maud is a better thing, being applicable to any part of the person and convertible into a counterpane at night. Caps and wraps of all sorts are to be had at the principal stations; but the less healthy people coddle and wrap themselves the better.
We will now suppose the train arrived in London.
HOTELS.
They who wish for a lengthened career must not stay long at London hotels. England is a striking contrast to the Continent in her houses of public entertainment. Abroad one never wishes to be out of an hotel; in England one never wishes to be in one. Undoubtedly it would be best if, on arriving in London, you could drive at once to a lodging, but as that is seldom capable of accomplishment, few people caring to go twice to the same one, and no one liking to put into the lodging lottery for another, it may be necessary to go for the night to an hotel. The Victoria and the Euston (in the same hands) close to the Euston station, and not far from King’s Cross station, are large well-conducted houses with attendance charged in the bills. The second floor is cheaper than the first, the third floor than the second, though we cannot but think that if all their charges were lower their profits would be larger. As, however, price is a good deal a matter of opinion, we will just subjoin the last bill paid by a friend of ours who, with his wife and her maid, arrived by express train at ten o’clock at night and remained over the following day, and let our readers judge for themselves. It is not an unfair sample of charges of west-end hotels of similar pretensions. The rooms were on the second floor. The gentleman breakfasted out on the morning after his arrival — viz., on the 23rd.
There are also several smaller hotels and houses that let beds for the night in all the streets of the Euston neighbourhood, but we cannot recommend any of them from experience.
At the West End, the Burlington Hotel in Burlington Street is a good house, and Walter’s Hotel, No. 4 Southwick Street, Hyde Park Gardens (near the Great Western Railway terminus), appears from its prospectus to be reasonable. Ellis’s, in St James’s Street, is said to be a good house.
The Colonnade, 20 and 24 Charles Street, St James’s, is in favour with single men and Opera-goers, while Limmer’s, at the corner of George Street, Hanover Square, leading into Conduit Street, and Hatchett’s, 67 Piccadilly, are in favour with ‘sporting gents’ as they are generally called.
The ‘Post Office Directory,’ a work that more than any other impresses one with the magnitude of London, contains two closely printed pages of Hotel-keepers, so that no one with money need sleep in the streets.
But the less you have to do with hotels the better. If driven into one, however, by stress of night, let us wish you well out with the loss of as few feathers as possible.
Now we will suppose you in a brougham in search of
LODGINGS.
As most places of public amusement lie to the west, do not locate yourself east of Regent Street. This street is full of bachelor lodgings, though north of Oxford Street there are a few family ones. Maddox Street, leading from Regent Street to St George’s Church, Hanover Square, is full of lodgings, mostly in sets of sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room adjoining. Three guineas a week is about the average for a first floor; two guineas, perhaps, for a second, according to the size and the way they are furnished. Bond Street, Clifford Street, Mount Street Grosvenor Square, Green Street Grosvenor Square, the low end of Park Street Grosvenor Square, Half-Moon Street Piccadilly, and Piccadilly itself, abound in lodgings.
Holies Street across Oxford Street is full of lodging-houses; so are Edwards Street and Orchard Street, and the streets generally about Portman Square. They are rather cheaper on the north side of Oxford Street than on the south.
The streets in the vicinity of St James’s Street and Pall Mall are full of bedroom lodgings where gentlemen get capitally put up for 2s or 3s a night, and live at their clubs at the rate of £10,000 a-year for some £7 or £8 a week.
Clubs are among the wonders of modern times, and it is worth the while of any one who is likely to be in London for a few weeks to belong to one. Indeed, membership of a club is an inducement to go to London, as no one can have any conception of their comforts who has not tried them. Those where the committees elect are the best to apply to for admission, inasmuch as there is no black-balling by members who wish to bring up their own friends. To be perfect the Club system only wants a sort of general receptacle into which the bores and nuisances of all the clubs might be drafted and kept together. The rooms above Sam’s library at the corner of St James’s Street, or a set of the Palace Club Chambers opposite would do very well for the purpose.
CHAPTER II.
IN LOOKING FOR LODGINGS — COALS — PASSAGE LAMP — BED AND TABLE LINEN — WASHING — BOOT AND SHOE CLEANING; CLOTHES BRUSHING — PLATE — RENT — TERM OF TAKING — ENTERING — LETTERS — BUTCHER MEAT — POULTRY — FISH — BUTTER, CREAM, AND EGGS — FRUIT AND VEGETABLES.
BUT TO LODGING-SEEKING.
The Belgrave and Bayswater districts drive fierce competition, the former relying on its fashion, the latter on its salubrity, for attracting.
We are not sure but that you will be as well located in the midst of everything on the east side of Hyde Park. If the houses are smaller and the air less pure you will enjoy your own homes more when you get back; but if you determine to try either of these great horns of the metropolis, Chester Street, Cadogan Place, Sloane Street, Halkin Street, all the minor streets in Belgravia abound in lodgings; while on the north or Bayswater side you have Albion Street, Cambridge Street, Upper Berkeley Street, South-wick Street, Porchester Place, all the streets leading away from squares and terraces; indeed, in Cambridge Terrace itself “Lodgings to Let” is often to be seen in the windows.
This is decidedly the healthiest and cheapest part of the west-end of London. You will get two good drawing-rooms adjoining, with two good bedrooms above and a servants’ room for three pounds or guineas a week.
IN LOOKING FOR LODGINGS
survey the exterior of the house with a “Lodgings to Let” in the window to see whether it looks one in which you may expect to find rooms of the size you require. It is no use going to Belgrave or Grosvenor Square in search of a lodging at a few guineas a week.
It would be a great convenience if lodging letters would specify in their windows what they have to let, as for instance a first and second floor, or a first floor; or the parlours, which means the ground floor.
Avoid corner houses as they entail a double allowance of noise; also those inhabited by musicians, tailors, bakers, doctors, dentists, and undertakers.
The private house lodging letters pretend to decry lodgings above shops, but if you see comfortable rooms above premises other than those of the professions and trades named do not be prevented taking them on that account. Your friends will not suppose you keep the shop, while it may be satisfactory to know that the lodging letters have means of living other than upon you.
Having seen what from the outside you think will do, you now proceed to knock at the door. If it is opened by a dirty, slip-shod girl; if, in addition, the mat is ragged and the passage unclean, back out as quickly as you can, saying if they have a first floor to let that you want a second, or if a second that you want a first, and so on. And here we may observe that there are no such things as fleas or other vermin in London lodgings. If you find any and are simple enough to complain, the landlady is sure to say you “must have brought them with you.”
LONDON LODGINGS ARE OF THREE SORTS:
First, the house-agent’s lodgings, or “apartments” as they call them, where no “let” appears in the window, and the business is transacted by a house-agent.
Secondly, the “either lodgings or houses,” as the takers require, where the letters transact their own business, and will go out, leaving their servants if wanted.
Thirdly, the regular first and second floor, or parlours, to let, that one sees at every turn and corner of the town.
It is said that every woman is a separate enigma; we can answer for it that this applies to every lodging-letting woman. Now we will consider varieties of lodgings.
We are not great admirers of the house-agent’s “apartments”; they are generally kept by pretentious people who, being above lodging-letting, leave their inmates to the mercy of the servants, whose services they not infrequently monopolise themselves. We knew one who could not bear the idea of her servants seeing any money pass between her lodgers and herself, and begged that the rent might be sent downstairs to her in a sealed envelope!
The second, the either lodgings or houses as the party requires, is convenient if your family is large, but there is attending them a danger it may be well to make known. Many of the houses have a sort of workshop or retiring rooms down the yard, and while the owners are supposed to be recreating at Margate or Heme Bay, they are in fact occupying these rooms and living upon their lodgers. We knew a case where a country family occupied a house of this description for a whole summer without ever suspecting what was going on; and this notwithstanding they had some fine, faithful old family servants of then-own up with them. Therefore we say “Beware of back settlements.”
The third sort is the common sort, and to them we will direct our attention. These are chiefly in the hands of “fine faithful old family servants,” learned in the doctrine of perquisites and polite peculation. These are curious people to deal with; the smiling, obsequious plausibility that marks the entry often contrasting with the stem inflexibility of the cracked-plate-and-uttermost-farthing scene at the exit.
Look at three or four sets of lodgings at least before you
begin to make up your mind upon any. This will enable you to judge of the current rate of prices and also to play one set of lodgings off against another. If towards the close of a bargain the party begins to be exorbitant about trifles, you had better cry off as they will be sure to cheat you in the end. Be very particular in looking at the offices and conveniences and the supply of water. Ask if there are any children or other lodgers, and if so, who. Also if they dine at home and at what hour, in order that your arrangements may not clash, as few lodgings can manage two dinners at a time.
See also that the street door opens with a latchkey and obtain one, as it is disagreeable to have to wait every time you come in till the servant arrives from the cellar or garrets to answer your summons.
If after taking, say, two floors, you find there is still a single bedroom disengaged, you had better take it and stipulate that there are to be no more lodgers in the house while you are there, otherwise the non-occupation of this room may cause such an influx of people as is quite astonishing.
COALS
are a fertile source of imposition. You are supposed to be in town at a fine time of year when it requires a little nerve to face a candle and seal a letter, but for the less fortunate as to season coals are often a serious item. A writer in the ‘Times’ lately exposed the fact that at an hotel he was charged 2s. 6d per day for 2 1/2d worth of coals! Lodging-house people will often try for Is a day for a sitting-room fire, and 6d for a fire in the bedroom; but 6d is ample for the one and 3d for the other; 3s. 6d a week, or 6d a day when you dine at home for the use of the kitchen fire is also a common charge, though it is far too much. Some very exorbitant people try to make a charge for the
PASSAGE LAMP, but this is sheer imposition.
BED AND TABLE LINEN
form another source of trouble. If the lodging letters find it and wash it they will stint you for quantity, while if they find it and you wash it they will inundate you with quantity in order to get a profit out of the washing, which of course will have to be done by their own washerwoman. Upon the whole it is better to have too much than too little. Lodging-houses, as we said, being mostly kept by old servants, are generally pretty well found in linen. We know of one entirely supplied with the coroneted linen of a Scotch nobleman. If it was honestly come by all we can say is that the Scotch are more liberal to their servants than the English. With regard to