The Boiled Beef of New England
The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort,
Milan, Geneva - almost any important town on the continent of Europe - I find very
striking after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. London is shabby in contrast
with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town like
Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with
Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it can rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of
shabbiness, to a stranger from any of those places. There is nothing shabbier than Drury-
lane, in Rome itself. The meanness of Regent-street, set against the great line of
Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set against
the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby by daylight, and
shabbier by gaslight. No Englishman knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de
Rivoli and the Palais Royal after dark.
The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of distinctive dress has, no doubt,
something to do with it. The porters of the Vintners' Company, the draymen, and the
butchers, are about the only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not
wear them on holidays. We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, convenience,
or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse. As to our women; - next Easter
or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and
think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.
Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than in Paris, and yet the
mass of the London population have a second- hand look which is not to be detected on
the mass of the Parisian population. I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman
does not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in
the way of his own class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the contrary, the
fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is,
until you see it in its last descent. It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I
observed four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation
of four people on foot. The four people on foot were two young men and two young
women; the four people in the barouche were two young men and two young women.
The four young women were dressed in exactly the same style; the four young men were
dressed in exactly the same style. Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused
by the two couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of having themselves set
those fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged in the display of them.
Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in London - and consequently
in England - and thence shabbiness arises? Let us think a little, and be just. The 'Black
Country' round about Birmingham, is a very black country; but is it quite as black as it
has been lately painted? An appalling accident happened at the People's Park near
Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded with people from the Black Country -
an appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition. Did the
shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness of the Black Country,
