Evan Hunter: Lizzie

Everything was new to the women, everything excited their interest. Like children deposited suddenly in a magic kingdom with unexpected treasures, they marveled at the simplest things that met their receptive eyes, chattering gaily, disregarding the warnings in the guidebooks, pointing and staring and rushing on to the next unimaginably clever wonder! The streetlamps here were taller than the ones at home (gas illuminated, of course, although the Hotel Albemarle was fully electrified), and each of them was equipped with a long, thin ladder resting against it, presumably to facilitate the lamplighter’s task. The large iron cylinders on virtually every street corner were entirely alien to them, and when Lizzie timidly asked a policeman what they might be, he answered, “Why, pillar posts, ma’am!” and when he saw her bewildered expression, added, “In which to post your letters, ma’am.” In almost the very next moment, a letter carrier dressed like a toy soldier in a little cap and blue sack suit with a red collar unlocked the cylinder and relieved it of its contents, carrying a stack of letters and parcels to a waiting mail wagon that resembled nothing so much as a little red circus cart on wheels, the letters V. R. painted on the side of it in gold.

“For Victoria Regina !” Rebecca translated triumphantly, and the women giggled and rushed off the pavement, having learned that crossing a London street was done in two stages. First you ran to a granite-block, oval-shaped platform in the middle of the roadway, a lamppost sprouting in its center, its circumference fortified by stout iron posts to ward off wagons. Next you caught your breath there while an avalanche of cabs, hansoms and horse-drawn vehicles of every shape and size thundered past, and then you rushed from the island to the other side of the street. If you were fortunate, a bobby would dash courageously into the maelstrom, raise up his gloved hand and, as if by silent proclamation, cause the horses and the rigs behind them to stop miraculously in their tracks. There were more policemen in London than Lizzie had ever seen anywhere! Wherever she looked, there seemed to be another bobby. (“Quite handsome, too,” Felicity remarked.)

Crowds, oh, my Lord, the crowds! They seemed endless, rushing along the pavements (they were called pavements here, the women had learned from a bobby, and not sidewalks as they were at home), darting in and out of the various shops and restaurants, hurrying by in quadruple procession, risking life and limb as they raced the horse-drawn traffic in the streets, dashing from curb to island to the safety of curb again, six million people (though they seemed far more) going about their daily business as if there were not these ogling, overwhelmed, confused and delighted Americans in their very midst.

And the street cries, oh, the marvelous street cries! Everywhere about them there was a babble of voices as the vendors hawked their wares in a veritable operatic chorus. Here stood a bootblack shouting, “Clean yer boots, shine ’em, sir?” And just beside him was a man standing behind a tray of nuts bawling, “Jaw-work, up and under jaw-work, a whole pot for a ha’ penny, hazel nuts!” And then, should the hazel nuts not appeal, “Warnuts, a penny for ten!” There were chimney sweeps whose faces were soiled a black as deep as their garments, shouting “Soot!” and “Sweep, ho!” and then turning to see that their equally begrimed apprentices were following close behind. On one corner stood a man selling meat on a skewer, and when Felicity wondered aloud what sort of meat it was, the man said, “Cat’s meat, miss, you eat it without no salt!” and then bellowed to a passing gentleman, “Cat’s meat, sir?” A man, carrying his tools and apparatus buckled in a leather bag, shouted, “Mend yer bellows, mend ‘em well!” and just beside him stood a frail young woman dressed in tatters and piping in a high, clear voice, “Come buy me fine myrtles and roses!”

The chorus became a blend of sound that was not at all unpleasant — “Stinkin’ shrimps! Lor’, ’ow they do stink today!” — a constant reminder of the rush of tumbling humanity in this city — “Buy my windmills, ha’ penny a piece!” — male and female voices, aged men and withered crones, young boys and fresh-faced girls, “All a-growin’, all a-blowin’! Knives, combs and inkhorns! Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender! Quick periwinkles! Sheep’s trotters, hot! Cherries-o, ripe cherries-o! Lily-white mussels, penny a quart! Doormats, want? Brick dust today? Buy any clove water? Hot rolls! Rhubarb! Songs, three yards a penny! New Yorkshire cakes! Buy my matches, maids, my nice small, pointed matches! Buy a Beaupot! Buy a broom! Hot cross buns! Young lambs to sell! Tuppence a hundred, cockles! New-laid eggs, eight a groat! Samphire!”

The language these people spoke was English — but it was not English. And this had nothing to do with the words the women heard not only on the streets but everywhere around them (tumbler for glass in the restaurant, basin for bowl in the lavatory) or saw posted in shop windows, print for calico, and cotton cloth for muslin, frock or gown for dress, and stays for corsets. In one of the shops Rebecca learned that a writing pad was called a block of paper here, and when she said — in all innocence and intending a compliment — “Such a fine store, it must be very old indeed,” the proprietor promptly said, “It’s not a store at all, it’s a shop, miss. I call a store a place for the sale of a miscellaneous lot of goods. This is a shop, miss!”

But more than that, more than the words that fell like Greek upon their American ears, there was the curious lilt and tone of the speech. Lizzie would later hear Alison define British as opposed to American English in terms of colors. “American English is yellow,” she said. “British English is brown.” And surely the British voice did seem pitched somewhat lower than the American. Moreover the average Englishman seemed to speak in a monotone until he reached the end of a sentence, at which point the voice rose to a higher note. It was Rebecca who commented (and she was a skillful pianist) that Englishwomen sounded as if they were speaking liquid music.

All was new and strange and fascinating in this bustling cosmopolis where a livery stable was adorned with a sign that read Job and Fly Master, or where men’s clothing stores were distinguished by signs such as Hosier and Glover or Outfitters. Even the bakery windows, brimming with dishes of cakes and pastries, displayed tiny little cards identifying each exotic delicacy, the words alien to their eyes: Banbury Buns and Eccles Cakes, Sally Lunns and Scones. The confectionary stores carried items with names like Rocks and Jujubes and Voice Lozenges, and dozens more that were unfamiliar to the women. All of London seemed an exotic bazaar brimming with merchandise of the queerest sort: coats of arms and heraldic devices, cast-off jewelry, stones taken from fob seals and rings, secondhand books, tarnished silver, hand-me-down clothes. In a drugstore, where Rebecca had thought to buy a draught of iron and quinine to bolster her flagging energy, the druggist (chemist, as he was called here) said, “Oh, we can’t give you that without a prescription, you know.”

“We can buy it in America without one,” Lizzie said.

“Aye, perhaps, ma’am,” the druggist said. “But not here.”

“Well,” Lizzie said, “can you give my friend an ounce of tincture of iron?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And a pair of two-grain quinine pills?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And could you lend her a glass — a tumbler, that is — with a little water in it?”