Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Note on Monetary Values
- Map
- Plate Section
- Introduction
- I FOREIGNERS IN LONDON
- II LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR
- III LONDON AT HOME AND AT LEISURE
- IV LONDON STREETS AND PUBLIC LIFE
- Bibliography
- Index
- LONDON RECORD SOCIETY
Isaak Shklovsky, from ‘Mr Muir’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Note on Monetary Values
- Map
- Plate Section
- Introduction
- I FOREIGNERS IN LONDON
- II LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR
- III LONDON AT HOME AND AT LEISURE
- IV LONDON STREETS AND PUBLIC LIFE
- Bibliography
- Index
- LONDON RECORD SOCIETY
Summary
[Shklovsky announces his intention to provide a series of ‘profiles’ of unknown Parliament back-benchers who never figure in the news reports and are only just beginning their public careers. He opens with a list of internationally well-known Members of Parliament, and then gives a detailed overview of Dickens's fictional portrayals of contemptible MP types. He ends the first section by promising to acquaint his reader with a ‘young candidate’ standing for election in Malvern, Mr Muir.]
It happened eight years ago, when I had just arrived in London and was living at a pension or boarding house. These boarding houses, or, more precisely, the colourful personages who inhabit them, merit a few words. A most curious company gathers in the evenings in the drawing rooms, with their stereotypical and cheerless furnishings. Most are foreigners. First and foremost, without fail, there is a ruddy-cheeked German, a commercial traveller or bank clerk. He tries his hardest to anglicise his appearance: wears very high turndown collars which cause his head to resemble a whorl of red cabbage with its stalk wrapped in white paper, talks about sport, and even shaves off his curled-up Wilhelm moustache. In his free time, the German clerk talks to the other guests about Germany's military strength. If there are any young ladies living in the boarding house, the German will not fail to declaim to them, rolling his eyes, some sentimental verses of this kind:
Träum’ich? ist mein Auge trüber?
Nebelt's mir ums Angesicht?
Meine Minna geht vorüber?
Meine Minna kennt mich nicht?
The young man explains to the uncomprehending young ladies that this is very good poetry, though far from the best in German literature. The English misses purse their lips and reply with the stock phrase:
‘Is it? Very nice indeed!’
If the boarding house is located in the quarter bounded by Montague Street, [New] Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, some of the lodgers will inevitably be Russians who have come ‘to the British Museum’: for the most part young Master's students, awkward, clumsy, and possessing only a theoretical knowledge of the English language.
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- Information
- London through Russian Eyes, 1896-1914An Anthology of Foreign Correspondence, pp. 222 - 227Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022