by Mark Twain
I lived nine months in that village. I got my predecessor’s mail along with my own, every day. He had left his new address at the postoffice, but that did little or no good. The letters came to me. I reinstructed the carriers now and then; then, for as much as a week afterward I would get my own mail only; after that, I would get the double mail again, as before.
But that was a pleasant village to live in. The spirit of accommodation was everywhere, just as it is in Germany, and just as it isn’t, in a good many parts of the earth. I went to my nearest postoffice one day to send a telegram. The office was in a little shop that had thirty dollars’ worth of miscellaneous merchandise in it, and a young woman was on duty. I was in a hurry. I wrote the telegram, and the young woman examined it and said she was afraid it would not reach its destination. A flaw in the address, perhaps—I do not remember what the trouble was. She wanted to call her husband and advise about the matter. I explained that I was following orders, and that if the man at the other end did not get the telegram he would have only himself to blame. But she was not satisfied with that. She reminded me that it would be a pure waste of money, and I the loser. She would rather call her husband and see about it. She had to have her way; I could not help myself; her kindly interest disarmed me, and I could not break out and say, “Oh, send it just as it is, and let me go.” She brought her husband, and the two reasoned the matter out at considerable length, and finally got it arranged to their satisfaction. But I was not to get away yet. There was a new difficulty. There were apparently more words than necessary, and if I could strike out a word or two the telegram would cost only sixpence. I came near saying I would rather pay four cents extra than lose another three shillings’ worth of time, but it would have been a shame to act like that when they were trying their best to do me a kindness, so I did not say it, but held in and let the ruinous expense of time run on. Amongst us, in the course of time, we managed to gut the telegram of a few of its most necessary words, and then I was free, and paid my sixpence and got back to my work; and I would be glad to repeat that pleasant experience, even at cost of half the time and twice the money. That was a London episode. I am trying to imagine such a thing happening in a New York telegraph office, but there seems to be something the matter with my imagination to-day.
DIAGRAM OF LONDON
The London ’bus driver does not seem like a city person, but like a blessed angel out of the country. He is often nattily dressed and nicely shaved, and often just the other way; but in either case the man is a choice man, and satisfactory. He hasn’t a hard city face, nor crusty and repellent city ways, nor indeed anything about him which can be called “citified”—that epithet which suggests the absence of all spirituality, and the presence of all kinds of paltry materialisms, and mean ideals, and mean vanities, and silly cynicisms. He is a pleasant and courteous and companionable person, he is kindly and conversational, he has a placid and dignified bearing which becomes him well, and he rides serene above the crush and turmoil of London as undisturbed by it and as unconcerned about it as if he were not aware that anything of the kind was going on. The choice part of the ’bus is its roof; and the choicest places on the roof are the two seats back of the driver’s elbows. The occupants of those seats talk to him all the time. That shows that he is a polite man, and interesting. And it shows that in his heart he is a villager, and has the simplicities and sincerities and spirit of comradeship which belong to a man whose city contacts have been of an undamaging infrequency. The ’bus driver not only likes to talk to his passengers, but likes to have a choice kind of passengers to talk to. I base this opinion upon some remarks made to a friend of mine by a driver toward the end of last February. My friend opened the conversation, along in the King’s Road somewhere:
“I suppose you are glad the winter is about over?”
“No, I don’t mind the cold weather, but I don’t like the road.”
“What is the matter with the road?”
“Well, I don’t like the society. Just villagers, you know, that’s about what they are. Good-hearted, and all that, but no style. No conversational powers. Chelsea—Walham Green—Battersea—that kind, you know. No intellectual horizon. Dull, honest, sincerely pious, and all that; but interested in the triflingest little commonplace things. I am degenerating, I know it. A man can’t live on that kind of mental diet and drive a ’bus.”
“Where were you before? Were you better off before?”
“Well, I should think! Hammersmith—Earl’s Court—Knightsbridge. There’s society! And brains. Yes, sir, and fashion. Top of the ’bus looks like a Queen’s Drawing-Room. And the talk—well, the talk is up high—away up towards the snow-line. Away up, where, as you may say, your intellectual water boils at a hundred and forty-five. That is the ticket. I’m tired boiling mine at two hundred and twelve.”
Part of the ’bus driver’s serenity in the midst of the London turmoil springs no doubt from his consciousness of the fact that he and his ’bus have nothing to fear from collisions, part from his confidence in the steadiness and biddability of his horses, and the rest from the fact that he knows how to steer. Drivers of cabs and carriages know that a collision with a ’bus is not a desirable thing, and they take pains to avoid it. The ’bus is English. When that is said, all is said. As a rule, any English thing is nineteen times as strong and twenty-three times as heavy as it needs to be. The ’bus fills these requirements. It is a lumbering big ark, it weighs no one knows how much and it minds collision with an ordinary vehicle no more than a planet would. It is a pity they did not keep the first English bicycle; it must have weighed upwards of three tons. And if it ever collided with an express train, the remains of the train must have been a spectacle.
It is an inspiring thing to see the ’bus driver steer his ark. He weaves in and out among a writhing swarm of vehicles, just barely missing them—missing them by the thickness of a shingle sometimes, sometimes by the thickness of a brick—and while you are doing the gasping and shrinking he is chatting over his shoulder, and his hands seem to be mainly idle and himself not interested in anything but his talk. It is wonderful steering, and yet it seems to do itself, it has such an effortless look.
Two horses draw the ark, only two; but they are capable. They are strong and sleek and handsome, well kept and well cared for, and on long routes they make but one trip a day. They are brought from America; they cost about two hundred and fifty dollars apiece; at the end of three years they are sold—often for more than they cost originally—and fresh importations take their place.
Here in Vienna the cab driver ranks as he ranks in all other cities of Europe—as the wittiest person in town, the ablest chaffer, the quickest and brightest at repartee. We always believe that, wherever we go; but we have to take it on trust, because the instances never chance to fall under our own personal notice. In London the cabman is noted for his smart sayings, but I did not have the luck to hear them. Many years ago, in Liverpool—however, that time it was not wit, it was humor. I was there with the late James R. Osgood, and we had several hours to spare, and much talking to do. It seemed a good idea to do the talking in a cab, and have the fresh air. The cabman asked where we wished to go. Mr. Osgood said—
“Oh, just drive around an hour or so—anywhere—we are not particular.”
The man sat still, and waited. Osgood presently asked what he was waiting for, and he said—
“I want to know where I am to go.”
“Why, I told you to go anywhere you pleased.”
The man looked troubled, puzzled, worried. But he sat still. Presently Osgood said—
“Why don’t you start?”
“Dear me, I want to start; I want to start as bad as anybody, but how can I, when you won’t tell me where you want to go? I’ve drove for fourteen years, and I never heard of such a thing.”
“Oh, do move along. I don’t care where you go. Go to Balmoral.”
We were very busy talking, all through these interruptions. We probably s
tarted, now. After a long time we woke up out of the talk, and Osgood looked at his watch and said it was getting toward train time. Liverpool was nowhere in sight. We were troubled, and Osgood said—
“Driver, what have you been doing? Where are you going?”
“Balmoral, sir.”
“Balmoral? What are you going to Balmoral for?”
“Because you told me, sir.”
“Because I told you! Did you suppose I was in earnest? How far is it?”
“Four hundred miles, sir.”
“Well, well, well. This is a joke—what there is of it. Get along back, as fast as you can.”
“Just as you say, sir.”
The man had a pleasant voice and pleasant ways and manners, and a good face; a very good face indeed, but a preternaturally grave one; not melancholy, but just grave; grave and patient. He had probably never smiled in his life. He was not dull; but he was not animated, not excitable; he had the look of one who was given to much thinking, and little speaking. By his accent he was Scotch.
On our way back Osgood amused himself a good deal over this matter. That we had lost our train did not disturb him; nothing ever disturbed that comfortable soul, that rare and beautiful spirit. He chuckled over this thing in his happy and contented and almost youthful way all the way back to Liverpool, and said we could add to it and trim it up and embroider it, and get the little Kinsmen Club together in London over a supper, and tell it, and have a good time over it. And while I mourned for the lost train he invented addition after addition for the story, and richer and ever richer embroideries, and got so much wholesome pleasure out of his work that it was a comfort to see him. At the hotel we climbed out of the cab and stretched our cramped legs, and Osgood put his hand in his pocket and asked the driver—
“How much?”
“Twelve pounds, sir.”
“Twelve pounds?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, man, you don’t mean pounds, you mean shillings.”
“No, sir, it is pounds.”
“By your face you are in earnest; but how do you make it out?”
“You see, sir, it wasn’t I that interrupted the job, it was you. I took the job, and I never made any objections, you will allow that yourself, sir. I could have done it in eight days; call it eighty hours. I am allowed three shillings an hour outside of the city. Eighty times three shillings is—”
“Oh—you propose to charge us from here to Balmoral; is that it?”
“You remember it was my orders, sir; and the law—”
“There, don’t say any more. I saw, myself, that this was a good joke on some one; I saw it early; but on account of not waiting till the details were all in, I made an error in locating it. We can’t afford to stay here and examine the case in a court, and so—come, we have had you five hours; let us see if we can’t arrange a compromise.”
The man was willing, and proposed five pounds. Osgood gave him six. Everybody was satisfied, and there was no ill blood at the parting. We did not gather the Kinsmen together in London. Osgood said that a story which you could not add anything to by your fancy and invention wasn’t worth while, and there did not seem to be any way to add anything to this one; it seemed to be born full grown.
If the cabman had been a German it could be believable that he did not know that the situation was a humorous one. But he was a Scotchman. There have been Scotchmen who have passed themselves off as being destitute of the sense of humor, but it was no credit to them that they succeeded. They could not have succeeded with intelligent people.
I believe that London is the pleasantest and most satisfying village in the world. The stranger soon grows fond of it, and the native lives and dies worshiping it. It is a most singular and interesting place, and the engaging simplicities of its fifty village populations are an unending marvel and delight to the wandering alien. For instance, he sees three or four brisk young men come along—idiots, apparently—with great loud-colored splotches painted on their faces, and wearing fantastic and bright-hued circus-costumes, and he will wonder how they can expose themselves like that and not perish with shame; and why they are not jeered at, and made fun of, and driven to concealment or suicide. But they are not thinking of being ashamed; they are gay and proud, and they hold their heads up, and smirk and grimace and gambol along, utterly complacent and happy; and they are not jeered at, but admired. They stop in the middle of the village street and begin to perform—for these sorry animals are comedians. The villagers come to the windows to see and enjoy; the maid-servants flock up the area-steps and their neat white caps with their flowing white streamers show above the level of the sidewalk; all kinds of humble folk gather and sit on the curbstones on both sides of the street and look glad and expectant. While one comedian brays a comic song, another shuffles off a pathetically rudimentary and ignorant dance to the rattle and thump of a tambourine, a third stands on his head, walks on his hands, throws summersaults and handsprings, and does other innocent little juvenile gymnastics, and the principal ass of the party—the grotesquely-dressed clown—awkwardly repeats these marvels after him, and pretends to get falls and to hurt himself, and then limps about, rubbing his stomach and ruefully shaking his head, and is so unspeakably and self-consciously, and premeditatively and ostentatiously funny that the villagers do nearly expire with laughter over it, instead of lassoing the man and lynching him.
Then the comedians play a play of unimaginable simplicity and incoherency and irrelevancy and juvenility—a play that lasts nearly ten minutes, sometimes—and the exhibition is over. All the spectators look pleased and happy, and greatly freshened-up. The whole performance has lasted twenty or thirty minutes, perhaps, and one comedian or another has passed the hat several times in the meantime. Not to the pit—the curbstone—for it is usually too poor to pay—but to the windows and the area. The solicitor holds up his cap and waltzes about with his beseeching eyes on the windows, and when a penny falls he jumps and catches it and returns a bow worth two thousand dollars. If there are as many as four comedians, and if their costumes are new and smart, the contributions are liberal; sometimes they foot up twenty-five or thirty cents for a single performance; but I have seen a troop consisting of two comedians, clothed in old and shabby finery, play seventeen minutes and collect only four cents.
Still, it was enough. It was profitable. It was more than twenty cents an hour; say two dollars for the day’s work. Those young fellows would probably have found it difficult to earn that much at any ordinary work.
Next, the stranger will see three or four “nigger minstrels” going along, with banjo, bones and tambourine. They are a sorrier lot than the comedians. They are “niggers” in nothing—not even in the black paint; for it is too black, or isn’t the right kind; at any rate it does not counterfeit any complexion known to our Southern States, and it is our negro that is ostensibly represented. The costumes are incredible. They counterfeit no clothes that were ever worn in this planet, or indeed anywhere in the solar system. These poor fellows furnish a “comic” performance which is so humble, and poor and pitiful, and childish, and asinine, and inadequate that it makes a person ashamed of the human race. Ah, their timorous dances—and their timorous antics—and their shamefaced attempts at funny grimacing—and their cockney-nigger songs and jokes—they touch you, they pain you, they fill you with pity, they make you cry. I suppose that in any village but London these poor minstrels and the comedians would be mercifully taken out and drowned; but in London, no; London loves them; London has a warm big heart, and there is room and a welcome in it for all the misappreciated refuse of creation.
In all the villages of prodigious London the villagers love music. They love it with a breadth and looseness of taste not known elsewhere but in heaven. If they were up there they would not shut their ears Sundays when the congregational singing was coming up from below. To them, anything that is a noise is music. And they enjoy it, not in an insipid way, but with a rapt and whole-hearted joy. Particu
larly if it is doleful. And there are no people anywhere who are so generous with their money if the music is doleful enough. In London poor old ragged men and women go up and down the middle of the empty streets, Sunday afternoons, singing the most heart-breakingly desolate hymns and sorrowful ditties in weak and raspy and wheezy voices—voices that are hardly strong enough to carry across the street—and the villagers listen and are grateful, and fling pennies out of the windows, and in the deep stillness of the Sabbath afternoon you can hear the money strike upon the stones a block away. The song drones along as monotonously and as tunelessly as a morning-service snore in a back-country church in the summer time, and I think that nothing could well be more dreary and saddening. But it brings pennies—pennies instead of bricks; and you note that circumstance with surprise and disappointment; or perhaps not exactly disappointment, but something between that and regret.
Still, your respect is compelled: partly for the catholic width of taste that can find room for music like that, and partly for the spirit of benevolence that is in the breast of him who throws the penny. The spirit of benevolence is there, there can be no question about that. There is nothing that is quite so marvelous to the stranger as the free way in which England pours out money upon charities. About half or two-thirds of the time, the objects are unworthy, apparently, but that is no matter, that is nothing to the point. It is the spirit that in many instances is back of the gifts that makes the act fine. Not in all the instances, possibly not even in the majority of them; but after you have put aside the reluctant and unvoluntary contributions, there are enough of the other sort left to make you wonder and admire and take off your hat.