The Song of the Siren

It was always exciting to arrive in London. The streets were teeming with life; there was noise and bustle everywhere; I had never seen so many people as I saw in London-all sorts of people, all different, all, I imagined, leading the sort of lives we of the country could only guess at. There were gentlemen in exaggeratedly elegant garments flashing with what could have been real jewels but might well have been imitation; ladies patched and powdered; vendors of all kinds of objects and apprentices standing at the doors of the shops calling out to passersby to buy their wares. There was the excitement of the river, which was always crowded with craft of all kinds. I could never tire of watching the watermen shouting for customers with the cry of “Next oars” and piloting their passengers from bank to bank and taking them for pleasure trips past the splendours of Westminster to beyond the Tower. I liked the songs they sang; and when they were not singing they were shouting abuse at each other. My mother had never wanted me to use the river. I had heard her say that people forgot their manners and breeding when they stepped into a boat, and even members of the nobility assumed a coarseness which would not have been acceptable to polite company ashore.

Although Carlotta would have called me rather slightingly a country girl, I could not help but be fascinated by the London scene. There was so much to see which we never saw in the country. The coaches which rattled through the streets containing imperious ladies and gentlemen so sumptuously attired fascinated me as did the street shows. One could see Punch and Judy in a booth at Charing Cross; and along Cheapside there were knife swallowers and conjurors and their tricks for the delight of passersby. There were giants and dwarfs performing all sorts of wonders; and the ballad sellers would sing their wares in raucous voices while some pie man would shout to you to come and test his mutton.

The greatest attraction was a hanging at Tyburn, but that was something I had no wish to see-nor should I have been allowed to if I had wanted to. Carlotta had seen a hanging once and she had described it to me-not that she had enjoyed it, I believed, but she could become exasperated with me at times and liked to shock me.

Her lover had taken her to see it because, he had said, she must learn what the world was about. She said it was terrible to see the men to be hanged arriving in a cart, and although she had pretended to look she had her eyes shut. She said there were men and women selling gingerbread, pies, fairings and the dying speeches and confessions of others who had recently met their death in this way.

I had said: “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear.”

But she had gone on telling me and, I believed, making it even more gruesome than it actually was.

On other visits to London I had walked with my parents in the Mall, which was delightful, and this fashionable thoroughfare was very much used by members of the respectable nobility. There one paraded and bowed to one’s friends and acquaintances and sometimes stopped and talked and made arrangements to meet at some place. I loved the Mall.

My grandfather told me how he had played Pell Mell there several times with King Charles. Nowadays there were flower girls there with their blooms, girls with baskets of oranges, which they preferred to passersby; and one could come face to face with a milkmaid driving her cow and stopping now and then to take milk from the cow so that buyers could be sure of its freshness. Strolling by watching the people was a great excitement to me. I had always enjoyed it.

“You should see it at night,” Carlotta had said to me; and she had described the gallants who went out prowling through the crowds searching for young girls who took their fancy. At night one could see the ladies patched and beribboned and sometimes masked. That was the time to stroll down Pall Mall. “Poor little Damaris! They’ll never allow you to do that.” And when I had said they wouldn’t allow her either she had just laughed at me.

I could never stop thinking of Carlotta for long and here in this city of adventure she seemed closer than ever.

We were all installed in the Eversleigh town house which was not far from St. James’s Palace, and my mother said I should have a good night’s rest for we would be out early the next day to see the beginnings of the coronation ceremonies.