On Town

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Title:     On Town
Author: Jenny Wren [More Titles by Wren]

There is not much difference of opinion as to when Town is at its best. Perhaps a few misanthropists, wrapped up in their little selves and their narrow thoughts, would shut themselves up during the season, in order to escape the pain of witnessing us all in our ungodly career. Shallow butterflies they call us. And what do they know about our lives? They judge from appearances; and because we wear a cheerful expression, shutting down our cares and struggles in our inmost hearts, and not burdening other people with them, we are called shallow and worldly. No, you good and godly people, what do you know about us? You are no more capable of judging than the ephemera, which lives but for a day, and so must consider the world all sunshine, all light. How can it imagine the night which closes round later on, when neither it nor any of its ancestors have ever lived to see it?

You ought to be punished for your ignorant mutterings. You complain of the well-dressed happy throng. You should be turned out in the streets in August and September, and if the utter destitution does not shortly turn your brains back in the right direction I am afraid your case is hopeless.

Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift, like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have never seen--descriptions generally gleaned from other books and compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery: places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels. Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.

There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show ourselves and to look at others. There the equestrians canter up and down the Row. Such equestrians too! If foreigners take their ideas of English riding from the Row, they must form a high opinion of our horsemanship.

There are the loungers flocking around their friends or walking up and down in the hope of admiration. And they get it too, for who could help admiring such master-pieces of a tailor's skill? Are these really the descendants of that Adam whose posterity had all to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow? These automatons, whose only business in life seems to be to look after pretty women and themselves? Men are supposed to be bread winners, but they have a very easy time of it, I think, though they generally try to make themselves out so overworked. Go into that great centre of business, the City, and you find everyone of these busy men out and about, always apparently in a great hurry, never seeming to arrive at any destination, running about and hustling each other, occasionally meeting an acquaintance, which proves a good opportunity for one to stand the other a "drink." A funny way men have of showing their affection, have they not? "Ah! how de do, old fellow? Come and have a drink," is their invariable salutation to an intimate friend. After all it is better than the mutual kissing on the part of women, which is the more emphatic the more they dislike one another. Men are less demonstrative and therefore more sincere in their friendships. Anyhow there cannot be many at work in their offices, or where could this idle crowd come from?

In spite of their haste, though, they generally find time to stare at any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity, and is followed by every pair of male eyes within reach!

Mrs. Grundy is inclined to rather overdo her season, I think. There is so much she might leave undone, so many things that "never would be missed." Imagine the gratitude that would be displayed to anyone who would put down and demolish those dreadful crushes, so called "at homes," where nobody ever is at home; where you have neither space nor air from the moment you arrive until the glad time comes for departing. Does anyone enjoy them, I wonder! Does anybody like being literally baked with heat, which I am sure must exceed even that at Mexico; where one of the inhabitants of that delightful climate, when he died and went to perdition, found the contrast so striking that he was obliged to send home for his greatcoat!

Still, I suppose such entertainments will continue to exist. They are a good deal cheaper than balls or dinners, and you can "knock off" ever so many people at the same time.

It is well, at any rate, to consider economy in some matters in these wofully extravagant days. When the shops are decked out in their gayest colors to lure us on to destruction, why is it that "just the very thing you want" is placed so conspicuously in the front of the window, put cunningly near a mirror too, so that you see it all the way round, and it appears doubly precious?

How convenient it is, by the way, when they have mirrors in the shop windows. You can look to see if your hat is straight, or your veil nicely arranged, without being credited with vanity. You are supposed to be admiring the bonnets displayed to view, not yourself. Girls make a great mistake when they take little surreptitious glances at any mirror they come across. The action is always noticed and condemned; while if they, instead, went up boldly, ostensibly to smooth their hair or alter a pin, it would be taken as a matter of course.

It so soon grows into a habit, this always looking about for your reflection, and one that is very difficult to get out of. Not that the men are at all behind us in this respect. There are not many of our little follies that the lords of creation do not take up and cultivate. You see them at dinner, addressing nearly all their conversation opposite--where hangs a mirror. At dances they are admiring and smiling at their reflections the whole evening, finding far more satisfaction in gazing there than at their partner, even though she be the loveliest in the land.

But to return to my subject. (I seem to be always wandering away.) You need never be idle in town. A wet day even makes no difference, when a place teems with picture galleries, as London does. They are such good places to meet your friends. You always see someone you know. You might as well be there as anywhere else. Of course you do not look at the pictures. You glance at the few you have heard talked about, just so as to say you have seen them. But you do not go to a picture gallery to look at _pictures_! "We always go the wrong way round. You avoid the crowd like that, you know," I have heard people say. "_Avoid_ the crowd!" It is the crowd they want to see! There is less chance of missing your friends if you go in the opposite direction! There is one real advantage though in beginning at the other end. You don't have the same people following you all the time, nor have to listen to ignorant remarks. "Who's that? She don't look very happy, to be sure," I once heard one woman ask of another as they were going round. "That? why that's Adam and Eve, o' course, and the serpent in the distance. I never 'eard of anyone else who went about without their clothes on, though why they put chains on her I can't think: it says nothing about 'em in the Bible."

I glanced at the picture. It was "Andromeda!" And they talk of the strides education has been making of late years!

[The end]
Jenny Wren's essay: On Town

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