Part 3 (2/2)
”This,” said my sister, impressively, ”is England.”
We had been here only half an hour, but I had already got my point of view.
”Let's go out and look up a hotel where they take Americans,” I said.
”I feel the need of ice-water.”
Our drinking-water at ”The Insular” was on the end of the wash-stand nearest the fire.
So, feeling a little timid and nervous, but not in the least homesick, we went downstairs. One of our gorgeous retinue called a cab and we entered it.
”Where shall we go?” asked my sister.
”I feel like saying to the first hotel we see,” I said.
Just then we raised our eyes and they rested simultaneously upon a sign, ”The Empire Hotel for Cats and Dogs.” This simple solution of our difficulty put us in such high good humor that we said we wouldn't look up a hotel just yet--we would take a drive.
Under these circ.u.mstances we took our first drive down Piccadilly, and Europe to me dates from that moment. The s.h.i.+p, the landing, the custom-house, the train, the hotel--all these were mere preliminaries to the Europe, which began then. People told me in America how my heart would swell at this, and how I would thrill at that, but it was not so. My first real thrill came to me in Piccadilly. It went all over me in little s.h.i.+vers and came out at the ends of my fingers, and then began once more at the base of my brain and did it all over again.
But what is the use of describing one's first view of London streets and traffic to the initiated? Can they, who became used to it as children, appreciate it? Can they look back and recall how it struck them? No. When I try to tell Americans over here they look at me curiously and say, ”Dear me, how odd!” The way they say it leaves me to draw any one of three conclusions: either they are not impressionable, and are therefore honest in denying the feeling; or they think it vulgar to admit it; or I am the only grown person in America who never has been to Europe before.
But I am indifferent to their opinion. People are right in saying this great tremendous rush of feeling can come but once. It is like being in love for the first time. You like it and yet you don't like it. You wish it would go away, yet you fear that it will go all too soon. It gets into your head and makes you dizzy, and you want to shut your eyes, but you are afraid if you do that you will miss something. You cannot eat and you cannot sleep, and you feel that you have two consciousnesses: one which belongs to the life you have lived hitherto, and which still is going on, somewhere in the world, unmindful of you, and you unmindful of it; and the other is this new bliss which is beating in your veins and sounding in your ears and s.h.i.+ning before your eyes, which no one knows and no one dreams of, but which keeps a smile on your lips--a smile which has in it nothing of humor, nothing from the great without, but which-comes from the secret recesses of your own inner consciousness, where the heart of the matter lies.
I remember nothing definite about that first drive. I, for my part, saw with unseeing eyes. My sister had seen it all before, so she had the power of speech. Occasionally she prodded me and cried, ”Look, oh!
look quickly.” But I never swerved. ”I can't look. If I do I shall miss something. You attend to your own window and I'll attend to mine.
Coming back I will see your side.”
When we got beyond the shops I said to the cabman:
”Do you know exactly the way you have come?”
”Yes, miss,” he said.
”Then go back precisely the same way.”
”Have you lost something, miss?” he inquired.
”Yes,” I said, ”I have lost an impression, and I must look till I find it.”
”Very good, miss,” he said.
If I had said, ”I have carelessly let fall my cathedral,” or, ”I have lost my orang-outang. Look for him!” an imperturbable British cabby would only touch his cap and say, ”Very good, miss!”
So we followed our own trail back to ”The Insular.” ”In this way,” I said to my sister, ”we both get a complete view. To-morrow we will do it all over again.”
But we found that we could not wait for the morrow. We did it all over again that afternoon, and that second time I was able in a measure to detach myself from the hum and buzz and the dizzying effect of foreign faces, and I began to locate impressions. My first distinct recollections are of the great numbers of high hats on the men, the ill-hanging skirts and big feet of the women, the unsteadying effect of all those thousands of cabs, carriages, and carts all going to the left, which kept me constantly wis.h.i.+ng to shriek out, ”Go to the right or we'll all be killed,” the absolutely perfect manner in which traffic was managed, and the majestic authority of the London police.
I have seen the Houses of Parliament and the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and the World's Fair, but the most impressive sight I ever beheld is the upraised hand of a London policeman. I never heard one of them speak except when spoken to. But let one little blue-coated man raise his forefinger and every vehicle on wheels stops, and stops instantly; stops in obedience to law and order; stops without swearing or gesticulating or abuse; stops with no underhanded trying to drive out of line and get by on the other side; just stops, that is the end of it. And why? Because the Queen of England is behind that raised finger. A London policeman has more power than our President.
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