The Island: An Adventure of A Person of Quality

It was such a sight—civilisation in a nutshell—that was what made me pause. I was a part of it, and Apollo was taking a peep at his own legs. Why not? we all seemed to be going on so beautifully; we were all busy, all doing something for progress. What a scene! The Exchange I had just left, with its groups of millionaires gossiping Bagdad and the Irawaddy, Chicago and the Cape; dividend day over at the Bank yonder, and the well known sight of the Blessed going to take their quarterly reward; a sheriff’s coach turning the angle of the Mansion House (breakfast to an African pro-consul, I believe), a vanishing splendour of satin and plush and gold; dandy clerks making for Birch’s, with the sure and certain hope of a partnership in their easy grace; shabby clerks making for the bun shops; spry brokers going to take the odds against Egyptians, and with an appropriate horsiness of air; a parson (two hundred and fortieth annual thanksgiving sermon at St. Hilda’s to commemorate Testator’s encounter with Barbary pirates, and providential escape); itinerant salesmen of studs, pocket combs, and universal watch keys; flower girls at the foot of the statue, a patch of colour; beggar at the foot of the steps, another patch, the red shirt beautifully toned down in wear—Perfect! We want more of this in London—giant policeman moving him on; irruption of noisy crowd from the Cornhill corner (East-End marching West to demonstrate for the right to a day’s toil for a day’s crust); thieves, and bludgeon men, and stone men in attendance on demonstration; detectives in attendance on thieves; shutters up at the jewellers’ as they pass; probable average of 7s. 6d. to the hundred pockets; with a wall only to divide them from all the turtle of the Mansion House, or all the bullion of the Bank! And, for background, the nondescript thousands in black and brown and russet and every neutral hue, with the sun over all, and between the sun and the thousands the London mist.

It was something as a picture, but so much more as a thought. What a wonder of parts and whole! What a bit of machinery! The beggars, and occasionally the stock jobbers and the nondescripts to go wrong; the policeman to take them up; the parson to show the way of repentance; and the sheriff to hang them, if need be, when all was done. With this, the dandies to adorn the scene—myself not altogether unornamental—the merchants, the clerks, and the dividend takers, all but cog and fly and crank of the same general scheme. What a bit of machinery!

But suddenly the sunlight faded, and there was a change in me. It was not a change of cause and effect, but only a coincidence. I fancied I saw the man in red furtively writhing in his shirt with the beggar’s itch, scratching himself, so to speak, against his own clothes. At any rate, something threw the apparatus out of gear. They seemed all scratching themselves on the sly. The whole thing looked as well as ever; but how did it work? I saw the clerks home, the shabbies to Stockton lodgings of unstained brick, where infants down with the measles called for drink in the night, and querulous wives compounded that claim for romance with which every woman born of woman comes into the world for the not too solid certainty of bread and butter, at thirty shillings a week all told. I saw the brokers making for their haven of Bayswater stucco to receive the reports of Jane’s progress in Elementary Physics, Master Harry’s broken window, the afternoon call of the Bristow family to bring news that of late Mr. Bristow has not been feeling quite so well—receiving these things, I say, and wanting to stamp and shout, or do something to give a pulse to life. I saw the sheriff’s coach, methought, with Care in it. There had been another troublesome meeting in Hyde Park; London was going to be governed for Londoners; and to-night’s snug Company Dinner, with its guzzling treasurers, masters, wardens, upper wardens, renter-wardens, past masters, chaplains, and the whole batch might be one of the last of the disgusting series. The very policeman had his anxieties; would civic reform bring him down to the wage level of the Metropolitan force? A soldier who had strayed into the prospect seemed to think it was odd to have to guard the Bank on sevenpence a day. They were all scratching themselves; and when an entire civilisation begins to do that, it is a serious thing.