Five... things Max Schlesinger wholeheartedly loved about Victorian London
A big omnibus fan
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s a companion piece to last week’s — Five things Max Schlesinger really hated about Victorian London — in case I left you with the impression that Schlesinger was a hardcore London-hater.
To recap: the Hungarian-born writer came to London in the 1850s, publishing his epic-in-scale travelogue Saunterings in and about London in 1853 (you can still buy a hard copy here).
It’s an often hilarious, often insightful exploration of everyday life in the city, and its marvels, pleasures and annoyances. I covered a handful of the annoyances (such aggressive adverts! such aggressive pedestrians! such aggressive fog!) in the last newsletter, so this time I’m focusing on some of the things that Schlesinger unreservedly admired. Because as Schlesinger himself notes:
‘Certain localities are nothing without an occasional glance at the chronicles of olden times; but with those aids to imagination, the very stones become gifted with speech, and proclaim the joys and sorrows, the pageants and horrors which they witnessed in their days.’
The unbelievable efficiency of the omnibus
‘Among the middle classes of London, the omnibus stands immediately after air, tea, and flannel, in the list of the necessaries of life. A Londoner generally manages to get on without the sun; water he drinks only in case of serious illness, and even then it is qualified with “the ghost of a drop of spirits.” Certain other articles of common use and consumption on the Continent, such as passports, vintage-feasts, expulsion by means of the police, cafés, cheap social amusements, are entirely unknown to the citizens of London. But the Omnibus is a necessity; the Londoner cannot get on without it; and the stranger, too, unless he be very rich, has a legitimate interest in the omnibus, whose value he is soon taught to appreciate.