First visit to London in 1851.--My first impression of the place.-- Nostalgia of the country.--Westminster.--The Royal Academy.--Resolution never to go to London again.--Reason why this resolution was afterwards broken.
In the year 1851 I went to London for the first time, to see the Great Exhibition. Our little party consisted only of my guardian, my aunt, and myself.
My first impression of London was exactly what it has ever since remained. It seemed to me the most disagreeable place I had ever seen, and I wondered how anybody could live there who was not absolutely compelled to do so. At that time I did not understand the only valid reason for living in London, which is the satisfaction of meeting with intelligent people who know something about what interests you, and do not consider you eccentric because you take an interest in something that is not precisely and exclusively money-making.
My aunts knew nobody in London except one or two ladies of rank superior to their own, on whom we made formal calls, which was a sort of human intercourse that I heartily detested, as I detest it to this day.
Our lodgings were in Baker Street, which, after our pure air, open scenery, and complete liberty at Hollins, seemed to me like a prison. The lodgings were not particularly clean--the carpets, especially, seemed as if they had never been taken up. The air was heavy, the water was bad (our water at Hollins was clearer than glass, and if you poured a goblet of it beady bubbles clung to the sides), there was no view except up street and down street, and the noise was perpetual. A Londoner would take these inconveniences as a matter of course and be insensible to them, but to me they were so unpleasant that I suffered from nostalgia of the country all the time.
The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear, very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.