“We have hundreds of miles of it in America, and wish you had it all!” retorted Caput, amused, but impatient. “Go on!”
Having seen Apsley and Stafford Houses, we bade the fellow take us to a certain number on Oxford Street. He declared there was no such street in the city, and jumped down from his seat to confirm his assertion out of the mouths of three or four other “cabbies” at a hackstand. A brisk altercation ensued, ended by Caput’s exhibition of an open guide-book and pointing to the name.
“Ho! hit’s _Hugsfoot_ Street you mean!” cried the disgusted cockney.
As I finished the anecdote our Scot returned, crestfallen. He did not say we had sent him on a fool’s errand, but we began to suspect it ourselves when we undertook the quest in person. We were wrapped in waterproofs and did not mind the fine, soaking mist, except as it made the strip of flagging next the shops slippery, as with coal-oil. Paternoster Row retains its bookish character. Every second shop was a publisher’s, printer’s, or stationer’s. Everybody was civil. N. B.—Civility is a part of a salesman’s trade in England. But everybody stared blankly at our questions relative to the Chapter Coffee-house, although the very name fixed it in this locality. One and all said, first or last—“I really carn’t say!” and several observed politely that “it was an uncommon nasty day.” One added, “But h’indeed, at this season, we may look for nasty weather.”
One word about this pet adjective of the noble Briton of both sexes. It is quite another thing from the American word, spelled but not pronounced in the same way, and which, with us, seldom passes the lips of well-bred people. An English lady once told me that a hotel she had patronized was “very clean—neat as wax, in fact, and handsomely furnished, but a very-very _nasty_ house!”
She meant, it presently transpired, that the fare was scant in quantity, and the landlord surly. Whatever is disagreeable, mean, unsatisfactory, from any cause whatsoever, is “nasty.” When they would intensify the expression they say “beastly,” and fold over the leaf upon the list of expletives.
We did not find our coffee-house, nor anybody who looked or spoke as if he ever heard of the burly Lichfield bear or his parasite, of Chatterton or Horace Walpole, much less of the Rowley MSS. or the sisters Brontë! Nor were we solaced for the disappointment by driving three miles through the mist to see The Tyburn Tree, to behold an upright slab, like a mile-stone, set upon the inner edge of the sidewalk at the western verge of Hyde Park. A very disconsolate slab, slinking against the fence as if ashamed of itself in so genteel a neighborhood, and of the notorious name cut into its face.