When the train drew up at Charing Cross platform, we hastened to collect our belongings for there was nobody to help us down with our luggage, and we had to find our way alone to Charing Cross Hotel loaded with our hand-bags. We were accosted on our way by a little hunch-backed man who pushed up to us on the crowded platform, a real ant’s nest, and offered in very good Russian his services as guide, proposing to show us the principal sights of London. He must know foreigners by heart to have guessed our nationality at first sight. We turned deaf ears to his importunities, fearing that miserable Æsop to be a pickpocket, but he continued to trot steadily behind us and repeated: “Can I be of any assistance.”
“Thank you,” we replied, “None is needed,” and we entered the hotel. The porter handed over the number of our room to us which proved to be No. 575, then we found ourselves in the lift en route for the fifth floor. As soon as we had repaired somehow, the ravages of sea and train, we went out to saunter through London. When we emerged from the gates of the hotel we again met Mr. Punch, our humpbacked pursuer, and this time we yielded to his assertions that without his aid we should be lost in the immense Metropolis, which he had at his finger ends, and arranged a meeting for the next day at the “Café Gatti” for ten o’clock in the morning. It appears that our guide is a Pole by birth, who had to leave Russia for political reasons after the rising in Poland, and has been settled in London for the last thirty years. This exile must be very trying in his old age. An intense compassion sprang up in my heart for the lonely old Pole, dismissed abroad to end his days, a friendless stranger in a foreign land.
Next morning our guide awaited us at our rendezvous at the appointed hour. We explored London thoroughly, crossing it from beginning to end with the underground railway and other conveyances. It was mid-summer, the season for London; in the streets it is all haste and crowding, thousands and thousands of people all hurrying to some place or other. Especially the crossing of the London Bridge, ploughed in all directions by omnibuses, cabs and private carriages, all tearing this way and that, made my head swim. We both drove and walked a good deal. The streets are very dangerous to cross; our old guide went before us, bent in two, one hand behind his back holding a stick. He was not very reassuring and said that in London, according to statistics, about a dozen persons were run over in the streets by carriages every day. In the City, the business part of the town, the heavy market waggons drawn by great powerful cart-horses especially attracted my attention.
We did a great deal of sight-seeing that day. We began with the Kensington Museum where we saw, amongst the many treasures which the museum contains, the first engine constructed by Stephenson, named by him “The Rocket.” On leaving the museum we were privileged to see one of the most interesting sights of London, the Houses of Parliament, on the roof of which a lamp, the symbol of watchfulness and vigilance, is burning continually. On our way from there to Madame Tussaud’s wax-figure show, we passed the noseless statue of Queen Anne. This damage was done by a hooligan who, profiting by the fog, climbed up the statue with the intention of mutilating it, but he had only time to cut off the nose when the fog cleared away suddenly and the miscreant was laid hold of.
In the main hall of Madame Tussaud’s Museum an orchestra was playing. Amongst the many wax-figures we saw groups of Royalties in the robes and jewels of other times. We were in the company of all the remarkable old Kings and Queens of England and France. We stopped before William the Conqueror, asking Matilda of Flanders to sit down, and Richard Cœur de Lion in domestic argument with sweet Berengaria, whom Madame Tussaud describes in the catalogue as a “Fair flower of Navarre.” Feeling thirsty we entered a bar-room, where we took a sherbet. The waitresses who served there were negligently dressed, with their fringes kept in curling-pins. Their reign only begins at night, when they put on their best attire and try to make themselves irresistible to their customers.
Still indefatigable, we went to visit Westminster Abbey, and saw the hall in the Temple where Shakespeare played before Queen Elizabeth. After that we had a stand up sixpenny lunch in a small and rather shabby establishment, which consisted of one room only, where a white-aproned cook fried mutton-chops served to us on a marble table on which table-cloth and serviettes were conspicuous by their absence.
After lunch we went again strolling about and left ourselves just time for a turn in Hyde Park before dinner. I begged for a four-wheeler instead of taking a hansom to drive there, dreading that sort of conveyance.
We were desperately hungry by this time and certainly we earned our dinner that day, which we took at “Monico’s,” a famous restaurant not only for the quality of the menu, but also for that of the guests. We ended our evening in a music-hall, and came back to the hotel after midnight to enjoy a well earned rest.
The following morning we ran down by train to the Crystal Palace where a great festival was given by the Temperance Society. This palace is used now for popular meetings, concerts, theatres, flower-shows, bazaars, etc. We entered a hall of enormous proportions where we found a monster musical gathering of some five thousand singers. A room was shown to us especially assigned for strayed children who had lost themselves in the crowd. In our presence a policeman brought there a small boy who was shouting desperately, “I want mother!” There was great animation in the extensive grounds all round. A dinner gratis was offered to the visitors, who belonged for the most part to the middle classes. They ate their meal under the trees, and the grass was all strewn with egg-shells and scraps of paper. As drink only beer was allowed. Two military schools, with their bands at the head, defiled before us.
The pleasure-train which brought us back to London was taken by assault. We ran from end to end of the long train in search of seats nowhere to be found, until at last we were literally hurled into a crowded compartment in which I squeezed myself between two fat ladies, taking up as little room as I could. Though we were returning from a temperance festival, there was a tipsy woman drunk with beer in the next car, who was leaning out of the window shouting bacchanal songs in a voice thick with drink.
We left London on the following morning. Our old Pole exhorted us to prolong our stay for another day, but we had no more time, and he saw us off at Victoria station. The mail train that was taking us back to France conveyed us swiftly to Newhaven from where we crossed by the ordinary steamer to Dieppe.
The train stopped close to the landing-place. The sea looked horrible from the pier, the wind was blowing strongly and black clouds hung over the sea. The prospect of crossing the channel in such weather was not enticing, and we were inclined to turn back to London, but it would be a shame to be so chicken-hearted, and braving sea-sickness we decided to go on.
We had hardly left the harbour when the steamer began to bounce and to pick its way from one wave to another, giving us the impression of a swing. I proved to be a miserable sailor and went below at once and put myself into the hands of the stewardess, who quickly placed a basin under my very nose. I lay prostrate on a sofa in the ladies’ saloon; my head was very bad and everything went round. What miserable creatures all my cabin companions were! woefully sick all of them. Sergy, much less liable to sea-sickness, remained on deck all the time. He came to see how I was and said I had better come up on deck, but I was too deadly ill even to answer him.
It took us six hours to get to Dieppe. We looked ghostly when we landed on the pier, where a large crowd had assembled to see the passengers fresh from a rough channel passage. I was so happy to be on dry land. I would rather die than endure another half hour of sickness. We saw on the pier Mme. Kethoudoff, one of our Moscow friends, a French lady married to an Armenian. That couple was compelled to strictly fulfil the French proverb, La parole est d’argent et le silence est d’or, (speech is silver and silence is gold) as Mr. Kethoudoff does not speak a word of French, and his spouse completely ignores the Armenian language. Mme. Kethoudoff had settled at Dieppe for good. She received us with open arms when we stepped on shore, and carried us away to her own house, situated on the “Quai des Écluses.”
I had not yet recovered from our rough passage and felt all the time as if the ground tottered under me. I tried not to think about the treacherous sea but couldn’t, for the ocean was there, just in front of our windows, in all its vastness.
Mme. Kethoudoff had at dinner that day the Vicaire du Pollet, a rosy and plump curate. This gossip-loving priest was a great favourite among his lady parishioners, to whom he was very fond of confiding little bits of scandal.
We took our after-dinner coffee on the balcony and saw the swing bridge giving passage to a Spanish vessel which was leaving the harbour. At nine o’clock in the evening a retreat was sounded from the neighbouring barracks. At the first beat of the drum the soldiers hastened up to their quarters from all parts of the town.
In spite of Mme. Kethoudoff’s hospitality, we moved that same night to the Hôtel des Étrangers, where we shall feel ourselves more at home and independent.
I lay in bed late next morning. After breakfast we went for a walk on the beach; the weather was rainy and the sea uniformly grey, nothing but furious waves around us. The monotony of this sea-shore unnerved me. We shall probably not make a long stay here. Neither is the bathing very agreeable at Dieppe; it only takes place at the hours of low water, and the bottom of the sea is so rough and stony that the bathers are obliged to put on sandals with very thick soles.
The rain having stopped in the afternoon, we drove to “Puits,” a small place consisting of lovely villas. Our driver, who was very talkative, gave us the pedigree of all of them. The prettiest villa belongs to Alexandre Dumas Fils, who is residing here at the present moment.
The next day was the eve of the National Festival of the French Republic. There was a “Retraite aux Flambeaux” (a torch retreat) in the evening. The soldiers began to beat the tattoo and marched through the crowded streets holding lighted torches in their hands. They were preceded by a military band and a body of fire-men. The whole town had a holiday air about it. The carriages being stopped that day, the middle of the streets was occupied by groups of women wearing their best clothes, who promenaded to and fro, coquetting with their young men arrayed in blue blouses.
Very early next morning the maid came to knock at our door begging us not to shut our windows as the cannon was going to be fired. It appears that the proprietor of the hotel was afraid our windows would fly to pieces, although the cannon had been placed at a great distance and there could be no danger whatever that such a thing should happen. Guns must surely be very rarely fired at Dieppe to procure such a panic.
The greater part of the inhabitants of Dieppe are anti-republicans, and the Mayor of the Town had to go himself to the “Vicaire du Pollet” to beg him to hoist the Republican flag over his house.
At nine o’clock there was a review of all the troops quartered at Dieppe, consisting mainly of a battery of infantry, on the large square before the hotel. I threw on my morning-wrapper, and in slippers, my hair hanging loose, I made my way to the next room which was free at that moment, and the windows of which looked out into the square. I was busy critically observing the military evolutions when suddenly there was a sound of footsteps, the door opened behind me and an elegant couple was ushered into the room by the manager, who was going to let it to them. The pair surveyed me quizzically whilst I fled hastily, ashamed to be caught thus.
After lunch we went to see the games and all sorts of public amusements on the square: rocking-horses, targets, foot-runs and what not! A slight railing divided the fashionable world from the world that works, only the local aristocracy, ultra-provincial I must say, was admitted within the enclosure. The prizes for the most part consisted of different foods. The crowd gathered around the chief attraction, a climbing post with a gigantic leg of mutton at the top of it. The native lads could not succeed in reaching it; taking toss after toss they slipped from the pole to the ecstatic joy of the onlookers. At last a young fellow had nearly attained the tempting prize, but he could not keep up on the pole and fell to the ground weakened by the strain of his position, without his leg of mutton. We stopped before a stall with brass medals bearing the inscription Vive la France! When I asked if there were any medals with Vive la République the woman who sold them answered in a voice full of indignation that she did not keep such horrors.
For some days the bad weather kept us indoors, it came on to rain as if it never meant to stop. Warmly wrapped up in a shawl I passed many dull hours lolling rather disconsolately in an easy chair, listening to the monotonous song of the wind in the chimney—a lively way to pass the time! We were growing very weary of Dieppe; I am absolutely sick of the place, and the best thing we can do is to pack up and go. As there was nothing to keep us here we decided, one wet, gloomy afternoon, to fling Dieppe to the winds and start for Paris, thence to travel right out to Switzerland.