NIGHTS IN LONDON

by

THOMAS BURKE

Author of "Limehouse Nights. "

[Illustration]

New YorkHenry Holt and Company1918

First published in 1915Popular Edition . 1918

[Illustration: ROUND THE HALLS]

_CITY DUSK_

 _The day dies in a wrath of cloud, Flecking her roofs with pallid rain, And dies its music, harsh and loud, Struck from the tiresome strings of pain. _

 _Her highways leap to festal bloom, And swallow-swift the traffic skims O'er sudden shoals of light and gloom, Made lovelier where the distance dims. _

 _Robed by her tiring-maid, the dusk, The town lies in a silvered bower, As, from a miserable husk, The lily robes herself with flower. _

 _And all her tangled streets are gay, And all her rudenesses are gone; For, howso pitiless the day, The evening brings delight alone. _

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS: TALES OF CHINATOWNTWINKLETOES. 

TO

MY MOTHER

WHO STILL ENJOYS A NIGHT IN TOWN

_NOTE_

 _These chapters on London life deal almost exclusively with the period before war, when the citizen was permitted to live in freedom, to develop himself to his finest possibilities, and to pursue happiness as he was meant to do. Since the delights of these happy times have been taken from us, perhaps never to be restored, it is well that they should be recorded before they are forgotten. _ _T. B. _

CONTENTS

 PAGENOCTURNAL 11

AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT (_Round the Halls_) 27

A CHINESE NIGHT (_Limehouse_) 57

A DOMESTIC NIGHT (_Clapham Common_) 73

A LONELY NIGHT (_Kingsland Road_) 83

A MUSICAL NIGHT (_The Opera, the Promenades_) 95

A JEWISH NIGHT (_Whitechapel_) 109

A HAPPY NIGHT (_Surbiton and Battersea_) 119

A WORKER'S NIGHT (_The Isle of Dogs_) 135

A CHARITABLE NIGHT (_East, West, North, South_) 157

A FRENCH NIGHT (_Old Compton Street_) 175

AN ITALIAN NIGHT (_Clerkenwell_) 185

A BASHER'S NIGHT (_Hoxton_) 197

A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT (_Blackwall_) 207

AN ART NIGHT (_Chelsea_) 215

A RUSSIAN NIGHT (_Stepney_) 225

A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT (_Shadwell_) 237

A SUNDAY NIGHT (_Anywhere_) 249

AT RANDOM 259

NOCTURNAL

_EVENING_

 _From the Circus to The Square There's an avenue of light; Golden lamps are everywhere From the Circus to The Square; And the rose-winged hours there Pass like lovely birds in flight. From The Circus to The Square There's an avenue of light. _

 _London yields herself to men With the dying of the day. Let the twilight come, and then London yields herself to men. Lords of wealth or slaves of pen, We, her lovers, all will say: London yields herself to men With the dying of the day. _

NIGHTS IN LONDON

NOCTURNAL

For the few who have an eye for the beauty of townscapes, London bynight is the loveliest thing in the world. Only in the London night maythe connoisseur find so many vistas of sudden beauty, because London wasnever made: she has "growed. " Paris affords no townscapes: everythingthere is too perfectly arranged; its artificiality is at once apparent. In London alone he finds those fantastic groupings, those monstrousmasses of light and shade and substance. 

Take London from whatever point you will and she will satisfy. For therustic the fields of corn, the craggy mountain, the blossomy lane, orthe rush of water through the greenwood. But for your good Cockney theshoals of gloom, the dusky tracery of chimney-stack and gaswork, thetorn waste of tiles, and the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurkingcourt and alley. Was there ever a lovelier piece of colour than CannonStreet Station at night? Entering by train, you see it as a huge vaultof lilac shadow, pierced by innumerable pallid arclights. The roofflings itself against the sky, a mountain of glass and interlacinggirders, and about it play a hundred indefinite and ever-changing tones. Each platform seems a lane through a dim forest, where the trees are ofiron and steel and the leaves are sullen windows. Or where shall youfind a sweeter pastoral than that field of lights that thrills themidnight sojourner in lower Piccadilly? Or where a more rapturousriver-piece than that to be glimpsed from Hungerford footbridge as theEmbankment lights and stones surge east and west towards Blackfriars andChelsea? Or where a panorama like those that sweep before you fromHighgate Archway or the Islington Angel?

But your good Cockney finds his joy not merely in the opulent masses ofgloom and glare. For him London holds infinite delicacies. There is ashort street in Walworth Road--East Street--which is as perfect as anynightscape ever conceived by any artist. At day or dark it isincomparably subtle. By day it is a lane of crazy meat and vegetablestalls and tumbling houses, whose colours chime softly with theirbackground. By night it is a dainty riot of flame and tousled stone, thegentle dusk of the near distance deepening imperceptibly to purple, andfinally to haunting chaos. And--it is a beautiful thought--there arethousands and thousands of streets in London where similar ecstasyawaits the evening wanderer. There is Edgware Road, with its clamorousby-streets, alluring at all times, but strangely so at twilight. To dashdown the great road on a motor-'bus is to take a joy-ride through afairyland of common things newly revealed, and to look back from DollisHill is to look back, not on Kilburn or Paddington or Marylebone, but onthe Field of the Cloth of Gold. 

Moreover, London wears always new beauties for the faithful--newaspects, sudden revelations. What was beautiful yesterday is gone, and anew splendour is presented. Building operations are begun here, house-breaking is in progress there, the gaunt scaffolding making itsown beauty against the night sky. Always, throughout the seasons, hertownscapes are there to cheer, to entrance, to satisfy. At dawn or noonor dusk she stands superb; but perhaps most superb when the day is done, and her lights, the amazing whites and yellows and golds, blossom onevery hand in their tangled garden and her lovers cluster thicker andthicker to worship at her shrine and spend a night in town. 

 * * * * *

Nights in town! If you are a good Cockney that phrase will sting yourblood and set your heart racing back to--well, to those nights in town, gay or sad, glorious or desperate, but ever sweet to linger upon. Thereis no night in all the world so rich in delicate delights as the Londonnight. You cannot have a bad night in London unless you are a badCockney--or a tourist; for the difference between the London night andthe continental night is just the difference between making a cult ofpleasure and a passion of it. The Paris night, the Berlin night, theViennese night--how dreary and clangy and obvious! But the London nightis spontaneous, always expressive of your mood. Your gaieties, yourlittle escapades are never ready-made here. You must go out for them andstumble upon them, wondrously, in dark places, being sure that whateveryou may want London will give you. She asks nothing; she giveseverything. You need bring nothing but love. Only to very few of us isshe the stony-hearted stepmother. We, who are all her lovers, active orpassive, know that she loves each one of us. The passive lover loves heras he loves his mother, not knowing his love, not knowing if she bebeautiful, not caring, but knowing that she is there, has always beenthere, to listen, to help, to solace. But the others who love herconsciously, love her as mistress or wife. For them she is more perfectthan perfection, adorable in every mood, season, or attire. They loveher in velvet, they love her in silk; she is marvellous in broadcloth, shoddy, or corduroy. But, like a woman, her deepest beauty she holds forthe soft hours when the brute day is ended and all mankind sighs forrest and warmth. Then she is her very self. Beauty she has by day, butit is the cold, incomplete beauty of a woman before she has givenherself. With the lyric evening she surrenders all the wealth and wonderof her person to her lover: beauty in full flower. 

As a born Londoner, I cannot remember a time when London was not part ofme and I part of London. Things that happen to London happen to me. Changes in London are changes in me, and changes in my affairs andcircumstances have again and again changed the entire face of London. Whatever the mood or the occasion, London is behind it. I can never saythat I am happy or downcast. London and I are happy, London and I arehaving a good time, or are lost in the deeps. Always she has fallen tomy mood, caught the temper of the hour; always is waiting, the fondmother or the gracious mistress, with stretched hand, to succour andsympathize in sorrow, to rejoice in good fortune. 

And always it is London by lamplight which I vision when I think of her, for it was the London of lamplight that first called to me, as a child. She hardly exists for me in any other mood or dress. It was London bynight that awoke me to a sense of that terrible spirit which we callBeauty, to be possessed by which is as unsettling and as sweetlyfrightful as to be possessed by Love. London, of course, is alwayscalling us, if we have ears to hear, sometimes in a soft, caressingvoice, as difficult to hear as the fairies' song, sometimes in a deep, impelling chant. Open your window when you will in the gloating evening, whether you live in town, in the near suburbs, or in the farsuburbs--open your window and listen. You will hear London singing toyou; and if you are one of her chosen you will have no sleep that nightuntil you have answered her. There is nothing for it but to slip out andbe abroad in the grey, furtive streets, or in the streets loud withlamps and loafers, and jostle the gay men and girls, or mingle with thechaste silences. 

It is the Call not only of London, but of Beauty, of Life. Beauty callsin many voices; but to me and to six million others she calls in thevoice of Cockaigne, and it shall go hard with any man who hears the Calland does not answer. To every man, young or old, comes, once in hislife, this Call of Beauty. At that moment he awakens to a realization ofbetter things than himself and his foolish little life. To that vagueabstraction which we call the average man it comes mostly with firstlove or religion, sometimes with last love. But come it does to each oneof us, and it behoves us all to hearken. So many of us hear, and let itpass. The gleam pauses in our path for an instant, but we turn our backsand plod the road of materialism, and we fade and grow old and diewithout ever having lived. Only in the pursuit of beauty is youthretained; and beauty is no respecter of person, place, or time. Everywhere it manifests itself. 

In the young man of the leisured classes this sense only awakens late inlife. He is educated to consider only himself, to regard himself as, inthe Broadway phrase, a serious proposition; and some time must passbefore he discovers, with a pained surprise, that there are other peoplein the world, and that his little life matters not at all in the eternalscheme. Then, one day, something happens. He falls in love, perhaps;and under the shock of the blow he discovers that he wantssomething--something he has not known before, something he cannot name:God, Beauty, Prayer, call it what you will. He discovers a thousandsubtle essences of life which his clumsy taste had hitherto passed. Hediscovers that there is a life of ideas, that principles and ideals aresomething more than mere fooling for dry-minded people, that thoughtsare as important as things. In a word, he has heard the Call of Beauty. Just as a man may live in the same house with a girl for years, and thenone day will discover that she is beautiful, that she is adorable, thathe cannot lose her from his life, so we live surrounded by unregardedbeauty, until we awake. So for seven years I was surrounded by the gloryof London before I knew that I loved her. . . . 

When I was a small child I was as other children of our set. I playedtheir games in the street. I talked their language. I shared theirambitions. I worshipped their gods. Life was a business of BoardSchool, breakfast, dinner, tea, struggled for and eaten casually, eitherat the table or at the door or other convenient spot. I should grow up. I should be, I hoped, a City clerk. I should wear stand-up collars. Imight have a moustache. For Sunday I might have a frock-coat and silkhat, and, if I were very clever and got on well, a white waistcoat. Ishould have a house--six rooms and a garden, and I might be able to goto West End theatres sometimes, and sit in the pit instead of thegallery. And some day I might even ride in a hansom-cab, though I shouldhave to succeed wonderfully to do that. I hoped I should succeedwonderfully, because then the other boys at the Board School would lookup to me. 

Thus I lived for ten years. A primrose by the river's brim was no moreto me than to Peter Bell, or, since I had never seen a primrose growing, shall I say that the fried-fish shop at the corner of the High Streetwas but a fried-fish shop, visited once a week rapturously. But afterthe awakening, everything was changed. Things assumed a hitherto hiddensignificance. Beauty broke her blossoms everywhere about the greystreets and the sordid interiors that were my environment. 

And my moment was given to me by London. The call came to me in a dirtystreet at night. The street was short and narrow, its ugliness softenedhere and there by the liquid lights of shops, the most beautiful of allstanding at the corner. This was the fried-fish shop. It was a greatnight, because I was celebrating my seventh birthday, and I was proudand everything seemed to be sharing in my pride. Then, as I strutted, anorgan, lost in strange lands about five streets away, broke into music. I had heard organs many times, and I loved them. But I had never heardan organ play "Suwanee River, " in the dusk of an October night, with afried-fish shop ministering to my nose and flinging clouds of goldenglory about me, and myself seven years old. Momentarily, it struck mesilly--so silly that some big boy pointed a derisive finger. It somehow. . . I don't know. . . . It. . . . 

Well, as the organ choked and gurgled through the outrageoussentimentality of that song, I awoke. Something had happened to me. Through the silver evening a host of little dreams and desires cametripping down the street, beckoning and bobbing in rhythm to the oldtune; and as the last of the luscious phrases trickled over the roofs Ifound myself half-laughing, half-crying, thrilled and tickled as neverbefore. It made me want to die for some one. I think it was for London Iwanted to die, or for the fried-fish shop and the stout lady andgentleman who kept it. I had never noticed that street before, except toremark that it wasn't half low and common. But now it had suffered achange. I could no longer sniff at it. I would as soon have saidsomething disrespectful about Hymns Ancient and Modern. 

I walked home by myself, and everything answered this wonderful newmood. I knew that life was rapture, and, as I looked back at thefried-fish shop, swimming out of the drab murk, it seemed to me thatthere could never be anything of such sheer lyrical loveliness outsideheaven. I could have screamed for joy of it. I said softly to myselfthat it was Lovely, Lovely, Lovely; and I danced home, and I danced tobed, and my heart so danced that it was many hours before I slept. 

From that day London has been my mistress. I knew this a few days later, when, as a birthday treat, I was taken to see the illuminations in ourdistrict--we were living near the Langham Hotel then--for the marriageof some princess or the birth of some royal baby. Whenever I am awayfrom London--never more than ten days at a time--and think of her, shecomes to me as I saw her then from a height of three-foot-five: hugeblack streets rent with loud traffic and ablaze with light from roof topavement; shop-fronts full of magical things, drowned in the lemon lightwhich served the town at that time; and crowds of wonderful people whomI had never met before and longed deeply to meet again. I wondered wherethey were all going, what they would do next, what they would have forsupper, and why they didn't seem superlatively joyful at their goodfortune in being able to ride at will in cabs and omnibuses and taketheir meals at restaurants. There were jolly fellows, graceful littlegirls, all better clad than I, enjoying the sights, and at last, likeme, disappearing down side-streets to go to mysterious, distant homes. 

HOMES. Yes, I think that phrase sums up my London: the City of Homes. Tolie down at night to sleep among six million homes, to know that allabout you, in high garret or sumptuous bedchamber, six million peopleare sleeping, or suffering, or loving, is to me the most impressiveevent of my daily life. 

Have you ever, when walking home very late at night, looked down thegrey suburban streets, with their hundred monotonous-faced houses, andthought that there sleep men, women, and children, free for a few hoursfrom lust and hate and fear, all of them romantic, all of them striving, in their separate ways, to be happy, all of them passionate for theirlittle span of life; and then thought that that street is but one ofthousands and thousands which radiate to every point, and that all thenight air of one city is holding the passions of those millions ofcreatures? I suppose I have a trite mind, but there is, to me, somethingstupendous in that thought, something that makes one despair of eversaying anything illuminative about London. 

Often, when I have been returning to London from the country, I havebeen moved almost to tears, as the train seemed to fly through cloudsand clouds of homes and through torrents of windows. Along the miserablecountryside it roars, and comes not too soon to the far suburbs and thefirst homes. Slowly, softly, the grey incertitude begins to flower withtheir lights, each window a little silent prayer. Nearer and nearer totown you race, and the warm windows multiply, they draw closertogether, seeming to creep into one another's arms for snugness; and, asyou roll into the misty sparkle of Euston or Paddington, you experiencean ineffable sense of comfort and security among those multitudinoushomes. It is, I think, the essential homeliness of London that draws theCockney's heart to her when five thousand miles away, under blazing sunsor hurricanes of hail; for your Cockney, travel and wander as he will, is at heart a purely domestic animal, and dreams ever of the lightedwindows of London. 

Those windows! I wish some one with the right mind would write an essayfor me on this theme. Why should a lighted window call with so subtle amessage? They all have their messages--sometimes sweet, sometimessinister, sometimes terrible, sometimes pathetic, always irresistible. They haunt me. Indeed, when a lighted window claims me, I have sometimeshung about outside, impelled almost to knock at the door, and find outwhat is happening behind that yellow oblong of mystery. 

Some one published a few years ago a book entitled "The Soul of London, "but I cannot think that any one has ever read the soul of London. Londonis not one place, but many places; she has not one soul, but many souls. The people of Brondesbury are of markedly different character and climefrom those of Hammersmith. They of Balham know naught of those ofWalthamstow, and Bayswater is oblivious to Barking. The smell, thesound, and the dress of Finsbury Park are as different from the smell, the sound, and the dress of Wandsworth Common as though one were Englandand the other Nicaragua. London is all things to all men. Day by day shechanges, not only in external beauty, but in temperament. 

As each season recurs, so one feels that London can never be morebeautiful, never better express her inmost spirit. I write these linesin September, when we have mornings of pearly mist, all the city aWhistler pastel, the air bland but stung with sharp points, and thesquares dressed in many-tinted garments; and I feel that this is themonth of months for the Londoner. Yet in April, when every parish, fromBloomsbury to Ilford, and from Haggerston to Cricklewood, is a dream oflilac and may, and when laburnum and jasmine are showering their petalsover Shoreditch and Bermondsey Wall, when even Cherry Gardens Pier haslost its heart in a tangle of apple-blossom, and when the statue ofJames II is wreathed about with stars and boughs of hawthorn as fair asa young girl's arms, when Kensington Gardens, Brockwell Park, and theTunnel Gardens of Blackwell are ablaze with colour and song, and whenlife riots in the sap of the trees as in the blood of the children whothrong their walks, then, I say, London is herself. But I know that whenNovember brings the profound fogs and glamorous lights, and I walkperilously in the safest streets, knowing by sound that I amaccompanied, but seeing no one, scarce knowing whether I am in OxfordStreet or the Barking Road, or in Stamboul, then I shall feel: "This isthe real old London. " The pallid pomp of the white lilac seems to beLondon in essence. The rich-scented winter fog seems to be London inessence. The hot, reeking dusk of July seems to be London in essence. 

London, I repeat, is all things to all men. Whatsoever you may find inthe uttermost corners of the earth, that you shall find in London. It isthe city of the world. You may stand in Piccadilly Circus at midnightand fingerpost yourself to the country of your dreams. A penny ortwopenny omnibus will land you in the heart of France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, China, the Malay Peninsula, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and Hooligania; to all of which places I propose totake you, for food and drink, laughter and chatter, in the pages thatfollow. I shall show you London by night: not the popular melodramaticdivisions of London rich and London poor, but many Londons that younever dreamed of and may curious nights. 

London by night. Somehow, the pen stops there. Having written that, Ifeel that the book is done. I realize my impotence. My pen boggles atthe task of adding another word or another hundred thousand words whichshall light up those thunderous syllables. For to write about LondonNights is to write a book about _Everything_. Philosophy, humanism, religion, love, and death, and delight--all these things must crowd uponone's pages. And once I am started, they will crowd--tiresomely, chaotically, tumbling out in that white heat of enthusiasm which, as afamous divine has said, makes such damned hard reading. 

For the whole of my life, with brief breaks, has been spent in London, sometimes working by day and playing by night, sometimes idling by dayand toiling through long midnights, either in streets, clubs, bars, andstrange houses, or in the heat and fume of Fleet Street offices. Butwhat nights they were! What things have we seen done--not at TheMermaid--but in every tiny street and alley of nocturnal London!

There were nights of delirium when the pulses hammered hot in rhythm tothe old song of Carnival, when one seemed to have reached the very apexof living, to have grasped in one evening the message of this revolvingworld. There were nights, festive with hoof and harness bell. There werecheery nights of homeward walks from the City office at six o'clock, under those sudden Octobral dusks, when, almost at a wink, London istransformed into one long lake of light. There were nights of elusivefog and bashful lamp when one made casual acquaintance on the way homewith some darling little work-girl, Ethel, or Katie, or Mabel, brown-haired or golden, and walked with her and perhaps were allowed tokiss her Good-night at this or that crossing. 

What romantic charm those little London work-girls have, with theirshort, tossing frocks and tumbling hair! There are no other work-girlsin the world to compare with them for sheer witchery of face andcharacter. The New York work-girl is a holy terror. The Parisiangrisette has a trim figure and a doughy face. The Berlin work-girl knowsmore about viciousness, and looks more like a suet dumpling than any oneelse. But, though her figure may not be perfect, the London work-girltakes the palm by winsomeness and grace. At seven o'clock every eveningyou may meet her in thousands in Oxford Street, Villiers Street, Tottenham Court Road, or London Bridge, where the pavements lisp inreply to the chatter of her little light feet. The factory girl oftwenty years ago has, I am glad to say, entirely disappeared. She wasnot a success. She screwed her hair into sausages and rolled them aroundher ears. She wore a straw hat tilted at an absurd angle over her nose. She snarled. Her skin was coarse, her hands brutal, and she took no carewith herself. But the younger generation came along, the flapper--andbehold, a change! The factory girl or work-girl of fourteen or fifteenwould surprise the ladies of the old school. She is neat. She knowsenough about things to take care of herself, without being coarsened bythe knowledge. And she has a zest for life and a respect for her dearlittle person which give her undisputed title to all that I have claimedfor her. Long may she reign as one of London's beauties!

Then there were other nights of maddening pace, when music and wine, voice and laughter harnessed themselves to the chariot of youth anddashed us hither and thither. There were nights of melancholy, ofanguish even, nights of failure and solitariness, when the last wordseemed to be spoken, and the leaves and the lamps and all the littledear things seemed emptied of their glory. There were the nights oflabour: dull nights of stress and struggle, under the hard white lights, the crashing of the presses, and the infuriating buzz of the tapemachine. There were nights of. . . . 

It is these nights that I pretend to show you in this book, in a littleseries of cinematographic pictures. If you will come with me, we willslip through the foreign quarters. We will have a bloodthirsty night inthe athletic saloons of Bethnal Green. We will have a bitter night inthe dock-side saloons. We will have a sickening night in sinister placesof no name and no locality, where the proper people do not venture. Wewill have a glittering night in the Hoxton bars. We will have, too, anight among the sweet lights of the Cockney home, and among pleasantworking-class interiors. And we will----

But let us get started. 

AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT

ROUND THE HALLS

_MUSIC-HALL BALLET_

 _Through the sad billowing base of grey and rose, Stung with sharp lamps in its most velvet gloom; Drowsy with smoke, and loud with voice and glass, Where wine-whipped animations pass and pass-- Beauty breaks sudden blossoms all around In happy riot of rhythm, colour, and pose. The radiant hands, the swift, delighted limbs Move as in pools of dream the dancer swims, Holding our bruted sense to fragrance bound. _

 _Lily and clover and the white May-flowers, And lucid lane afire with honeyed blooms, And songs that time nor tears can ever fade, Hold not the grace for which my heart has prayed. But in this garden of gilt loveliness, Lapped by the muffled pulse of hectic hours, Something in me awoke to happiness; And through the streets of plunging hoof and horn, I walked with Beauty to the dim-starred morn. _

AN ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT

ROUND THE HALLS

Of course, every night spent in London is an entertainment night, forLondon has more blood and pace and devil than any city I know. Thick asthe physical atmosphere is with smoke and fog, its moral atmosphere isyet charged with a sparkle as of light wine. It is more effervescentthan any continental city. It is the city of cities for learning, art, wit, and--Carnival. Go where you please at nightfall and Carnival slipsinto the blood, lighting even Bond Street--the dreariest street intown--with a little flame of gaiety. I have assisted at carnivals andfeasts in various foreign parts--carnivals of students and also of thetheatrically desperate apaches in the crawling underworlds. But, oh, what bilious affairs! You simply flogged yourself into it. You said, asit were: "I am in Vienna, or Berlin, or Paris, or Brussels, orMarseilles, or Trieste; therefore, I am gay. Of course I am gay. " Butyou were not. You were only bored, and the show only became endurableafter you had swallowed various absinthes, vermuths, and other rot-gut. 

All the time you were--or I was--aching for Camden Town High Street, anda good old London music-hall. I cannot understand those folk who sniffat the English music-hall and belaud the Parisian shows. These latterare to me the most dismal, lifeless form of entertainment that a publicever suffered. Give me the Oxford, the Pavilion, or the Alhambra, oreven a suburban Palace of Varieties. Ever since the age of eight themusic-hall has been a kind of background for me. Long before that age Ican remember being rushed through strange streets and tossed, breathless, into an overheated theatre roaring with colour. The show wasthen either the Moore and Burgess Minstrels or the Egyptian Hall, followed by that chief of all child-life entertainments--tea at atea-shop. But at eight I was initiated into the mysteries of the Halls, for a gracious _chef d'orchestre_ permitted me to sit in the orchestraof an outlying hall, by the side of a cousin who sawed the double bass. 

I have loved the music-hall ever since, and I still worship that _chefd'orchestre_, and if I met him now I am sure I should bow, though I knowthat he was nothing but a pillow stuffed with pose. But in those days, what a man! Or no--not a man--what a demi-god! You should have seen himenter the orchestra on the call: "Mr. Francioli, please!" Your ordinarymusic-hall conductor ducks from below, slips into his chair, and his taphas turned on the flow of his twenty instruments before you realize thathe is up. But not so Francioli. For him the old school, the old manners, laddie. He never came into the orchestra. He "entered. " He would bendgracefully as he stepped from the narrow passage beneath the stage intothe orchestra. He would stand upright among his boys for a little minutewhile he adjusted his white gloves. His evening dress would have turnedGeorge Lashwood sick with envy. The perfect shirt of the perfect shapeof the hour, the tie in the correct mode, the collar of the moment, thethick, well-oiled hair, profuse and yet well in hand, the right flowerin the buttonhole at just the right angle--so he would stand, with lipspursed in histrionic manner, gazing quietly before him, smiling, tocasual friends, little smiles which were nothing more unbending thandignified acknowledgment. Then he would stretch a godlike arm to therail, climb into his chair, and spend another half-minute in settlinghimself, turning now and then to inspect the house from floor toceiling. At the tinkle of the stage-manager's bell the grand momentwould come. His hand would sail to the desk, and he would take the batonas one might select a peach from the dessert-dish. He would lookbenignly upon his boys, tap, raise both resplendent hands aloft, andaway he would go into the "Zampa" overture. 

His attitude to the show was a study in holy detachment. He simply didnot see it. He would lean back in his chair at a comfortable angle, andconduct from the score on his desk. But he never smiled at a joke, henever beamed upon a clever turn, he never even exchanged glances withthe stars. He was Olympian. I think he must have met Irving as a youngman, and have modelled himself on his idiosyncrasies. Certainly everypose that ever a musician or actor practised was doubled in him. Ibelieve he must have posed in his sleep and in his bath. Indeed, myyoung mind used to play upon the delicate fancy that such a creaturecould never do anything so common as eat or drink or pursue any of thedaily functions of us ordinary mortals. I shrank from conceiving himundressed. . . . 

Once, I remember, he came down from his cloudy heights and stood mycousin a drink and myself a lemonade. I didn't want to drink thatlemonade. I wanted to take it home and stand it under a glass shade. Hehimself drank what I was told was a foreign drink in a tiny glass. Helingered over it, untouched, while he discussed with us the exactphrasing of the symphony for the star man's song; then, at the call, with a sweep of his almighty arm he carried the glass to his lips with a"To you, my boy!" held it poised for a moment, set it down, and strodeaway, followed by rapt gazes from the barmaids. 

A stout fellow. He took the conductor's chair with all the pomposity ofa provincial borough official. He tapped for the coda with the touch ofa king knighting an illustrious subject. And when he led the boysthrough the National Anthem, standing up in his place and facing thehouse, all lights up--well, there are literally no words for it. . . . 

At twelve years old I grew up, and sought out my own entertainment, prowling, always alone, into strange places. I discovered halls thatnobody else seemed to know, such as the Star at Bermondsey, the Queen'sat Poplar, and the Cambridge in Commercial Street. I crawled aroundqueer bars, wonderfully lighted, into dusky refreshment-houses in theAsiatic quarter, surely devised by Haroun al Raschid, and into softlylit theatres and concert-halls. At eighteen I took my pleasures lessnaïvely, and dined solemnly in town, and toured, solemn and critical, the western halls, enjoying everything but regarding it with paledetachment. Now, however, I am quite frank in my delight in thisinstitution, which has so crept into the life of the highest and thelowest, the vulgar and the intellectual; and scarcely a week passeswithout a couple of shows. 

The mechanism of the modern hall is a marvellous thing. From the smalloffices about Leicester Square, where the big circuits are registered, men and women and children are sent thousands and thousands of miles tosing, dance, act, or play the fool. The circuits often control thirty orforty halls in London and the provinces, each of which is under the careof a manager, who is responsible for its success. The turns are bookedby the central booking manager and allocated either to this or thatLondon hall, or to work the entire syndicate tour; and the bill of eachhall, near or far, is printed and stage-times fixed weeks in advance. The local manager every Saturday night has to pay his entire staff, bothstage and house; that is, he not only pays programme girls, chuckers-out, electricians, and so forth, but each artist, even the £200a week man, is paid in cash at each hall he is working. When a new turnis booked for any given hall, the manager of that hall must be "infront" and watch that turn and its success or non-success with thehouse; and, at the end of the week, a confidential report has to besent to headquarters in which the manager tells the cold truth: whetherthe show is good, whether it "went, " how much salary it is worth, andwhether it is worth a re-booking. 

It is, like journalism, a hard, hard life and thankless for every oneconcerned, from bill-topper to sweeper; yet there is a furious colourabout it, and I think no one connected with it would willingly quit. Themost hard-worked of all are the electricians. First in the hall of anevening, they, with the band and the janitors, are the last to leave. Following them, at about half-past five (in the case of the two-houseshalls), come programme girls, barmaids, call-boy, stage-manager, shifters, and all other stage hands. 

All are philosophers, in their way, and all seem to have caught the tangof the profession and to be, subconsciously, of the mummer persuasion. Ionce had a long, long talk with the chief electrician of a London hall, or, to give him the name by which he is best known, the limelight man. Iclimbed the straight iron ladder from the wings to his little platform, with only sufficient foothold for two people, and there I stood with himfor two hours, while he waggled spots, floods, and focuses, and litteredthe platform with the hastily scrawled lighting-plots of the performers. 

The limes man is really the most important person in the show. Ofcourse, the manager doesn't think so, and the stage-manager doesn'tthink so, and the carpenter doesn't think so, and the band doesn't thinkso. But he is. Many of the music-hall favourites, such as La Milo and LaLoie Fuller, would have no existence but for him. Skilful lightingeffects and changes of colour are often all that carries a commonplaceturn to popularity; and just think of the power in that man's hands! Hecould ruin any young turn he liked simply by "blacking her out"; and, ifhe feels good, he can help many beginners with expert advice. The younggirl new to the boards, and getting her first show, has hardly theslightest idea what she shall give him in the way of lighting-plot;very generously she leaves it to him, and he sees her show and lights itas he thinks most effective. 

Long before the doors open he is moving from box to box, in wings andflies, fixing this, altering that, and arranging the other; and cursinghis assistants--usually lads of sixteen--who have to work the coloursfrom wings, roof, circle, and side of the house. Lights are of threekinds: spot, focus, and flood. The spot is used on a dark stage, andlights only the singer's head and shoulders. The focus lights thecomplete figure. The flood covers the stage. Each of these is worked inconjunction with eight or nine shaded films placed before the arc light. Here is a typical lighting-plot, used by a prominent star:--

 First Song. Symph. ; all up stage and house. Focus for my entrance. White perches and battens for first chorus. Then black out, and gallery green focus for dance, changing to ruby at cue, and white floods at chord off. 

The limelight man never sees the show. In his little cupboard, he hearsnothing but the hissing of his arcs and the tinkle of thestage-manager's prompting bell at the switchboard which controls everylight in the theatre, before and behind. He has to watch every movementof the artist who is on, but what he or she is doing or saying, he doesnot know. He is, perhaps, the only man who has never laughed at LittleTich. 

John Davidson, I think, wrote a series of poems under the title of "In aMusic Hall, " but these were mainly philosophical, and neither he norothers seem to have appreciated the _colour_ of the music-hall. It isthe most delicate of all essences of pleasure, and we owe it to the freehand that is given to the limelight man. You get, perhaps, a girl inwhite, singing horribly or dancing idiotically, but she is dancing inwhite against a deep blue curtain filigreed with silver, and the wholeflooded in amber light. And yet there are those who find the Londonmusic-hall dull!

The modern music-hall band, too, is a hard-working and poorlyremunerated concern; and in many cases it really is a band and it doesmake music. It is hard at it for the whole of the evening, with no breakfor refreshment unless there be a sketch in the bill. There are, too, the matinées and the rehearsal every Monday at noon. The boys must beexpert performers, and adaptable to any emergency. Often when a numbercannot turn up, a deputy has to be called in by 'phone. The band seldomknows what the deputy will sing; there is no opportunity for rehearsal;and sometimes they have not even an idea of the nature of the turn untilband parts are put in. This means that they must read at sight, that theconductor must follow every movement of the artist, in order to catchhis spasmodic cues for band or patter, and that the boys must keep oneeye on music they have never seen before, and the other on their oldman's stick. 

The conductor, too, works hard at rehearsals; not, as you might think, with the stars, but, like the limelight man, with the youngsters. Thestars can look after themselves; they are always sure to go. But thenervous beginner needs a lot of attention from the band, and it ispleasant to know that in most London halls he gets it ungrudgingly. AWest End _chef d'orchestre_ said to me some time ago: "I never mind howmuch trouble I take over them. If they don't go it means such a lot tothe poor dears. Harry Lauder can sing anything anyhow, and he's alright. But I've often found that these girls and boys hand me out band partswhich are perfectly useless for the modern music-hall; and again andagain I've found that effective orchestration and a helping hand from uspulls a poor show through and gets 'em a return booking. Half the day ofrehearsing is spent with the beginners. "

An extraordinary improvement in the musical side of vaudeville has takenplace within the last fifteen years. Go to any hall any night, and youwill almost certainly hear something of Wagner, Mendelssohn, Weber, Mozart. I think, too, that the songs are infinitely better than in theold days; not only in the direction of melody but in orchestration, which is often incomparably subtle. It is, what vaudeville music shouldbe, intensely funny, notably in the running chatter of the strings andthe cunning commentary of woodwind and drums. Pathetic as its passingis, one cannot honestly regret the old school. I was looking last nightat the programme of my very first hall, and received a terrible shock tomy time-sense. Where are the snows of yesteryear? Where are theentertainers of 1895? Not one of their names do I recognize, and yetthree of them are in heavy type. One by one they drop out, and theirplaces are never filled. The new man, the new style of humour, comesalong, and attracts its own votaries, who sniff, even as I sniff, at theperformers of past times. Who is there to replace that perilouslypiquant _diseur_ Harry Fragson? None. But Frank Tinney comes along withsomething fresh, and we forget the art of Fragson, and pay many goldensovereigns to Frank to amuse us in the new way. 

Where, too, are the song-writers? That seems to me one of the greatesttragedies of the vaudeville world: that a man should compose a song thatputs a girdle round about the globe; a song that is sung on liners, ontroopships, at feasts in far-away Singapore or Mauritius; a song thatinspires men in battle and helps soldiers to die; a song that, like"Tipperary, " has been the slogan of an Empire; that a man should createsuch a thing and live and die without one in ten thousand of his singersknowing even his name. Who composed "Tipperary"? You don't know? Ithought not. Who composed "Let's all go down the Strand, " a song thatsurely should have been adopted as The Anthem of London? Who composed"Hot Time in the Old Town to-night"--the song that led the Americans tovictory in Cuba and the Philippines? We know the names of hundreds offinicky little poets and novelists and pianists; but their work nevershook a nation one inch, or cheered men in sickness and despair. Of themen who really captured and interpreted the national soul we knownothing and care less; and how much they get for their copyrights is amatter that even themselves do not seem to take with sufficientseriousness. Yet personally I have an infinite tenderness for theseunknowns, for they have done me more good than any other triflers withart-forms. I should like to shake the composer of "La Maxixe" by thehand, and I owe many a debt of gratitude to the creator of "Red Pepper"and "Robert E. Lee. " So many of these fugitive airs have been part of mylife, as they are part of every Cockney's life. They are, indeed, acalendar. Events date themselves by the song that was popular at thattime. When, for instance, I hear "The Jonah Man" or "Valse Bleu, " mymind goes back to the days when a tired, pale office-boy worked in theCity and wrote stories for the cheap papers in his evenings. When I hear"La Maxixe" I shiver with frightful joy. It recalls the hot summer of1906, when I had money and wine and possession and love. When I hear"Beautiful Doll, " I become old and sad; I want to run away and hidemyself. When I hear "Hiawatha" or "Bill Bailey, " I get back the mood ofthat year--a mood murderously bitter. Verily, the street organ and itscomposers are things to be remembered in our prayers and toasts. 

 * * * * *

Every London hall has its own character and its own audience. ThePavilion programme is temperamentally distinct from the Oxford bill; theAlhambra is equally marked from the Empire; and the Poplar Hippodrome, in patrons and performers, is widely severed from the Euston. The sameturns are, of course, seen eventually at every hall, but never the samegroup of turns, collectively. As for the Hippodrome and theColiseum--non-licensed houses--their show and their audience are whatone would expect: a first-class show, and an audience decorous andStreathamish. I think we will not visit either, nor will we visit thehall with its world-famous promenade, about which our bishops seem toknow more than I do. 

Let us try the Oxford, where you are always sure of a pleasant crowd, agood all-round show, and alcoholic refreshment if you require it. Thereare certain residentials, if I may so term them, of the Oxford, whom youmay always be sure of meeting here, and who will always delight you. Mark Sheridan, for example, is pretty certain to be there, with WilkieBard, Clarice Mayne, Phil Ray, Sam Mayo, Beattie and Babs, T. E. Dunville, George Formby, and those veterans, Joe Elvin and GeorgeChirgwin. 

There is a good overture, and the house is comfortable without beinggorgeous. There is a sense of intimacy about it. The audience, too, isalways on form. Audiences, by the way, have a great deal to do with thesuccess of any particular show, quite apart from its merits. There isone famous West End hall, which I dare not name, whose audience isalways "bad"--i. E. Cold and inappreciative; the best of all good turnsnever "goes" at that house, and artists dread the week when they arebooked there. I have seen turns which have sent other houses into oneconvulsive fit, but at this hall the audience has sat immovable andcolourless while the performers wasted themselves in furious efforts toget over the footlights. At the Oxford, however, the audience is always"with you, " and this atmosphere gets behind and puts the artists, intheir turn, on the top of their form. The result is a sparkling eveningwhich satisfies everybody. 

It is a compact little place, as the music-hall should be. In those newcaravanserai of colossal proportions and capacity, it is impossible fora man to develop that sense of good-fellowship which is inseparable fromthe traditions of the London hall. Intimacy is its very essence, andhow can a man be intimate on a stage measuring something like seventyfeet in length, a hundred feet in depth, with a proscenium over sixtyfeet high, facing an auditorium seating three thousand persons, andseparated from them by a marbled orchestra enclosure four or five timesas wide as it should be. It is pathetic to see George Mozart or GeorgeRobey trying to adapt his essentially miniature art to these vastyproportions. Physically and mentally he is dwarfed, and his effectshardly ever get beyond the orchestra. These new halls, with theircircles, and upper circles, and third circles, and Louis XV Salons andPalm Courts, have been builded over the bones of old English humour. They are good for nothing except ballet, one-act plays with largeeffects, and tabloid grand opera. But apparently the public like them, for the old halls are going. The Tivoli site is to bear a Y. M. C. A. Home, and the merriment of the Strand will be still further frowned upon. 

There is always an acrobat turn in the Oxford bill, and always a cheerycross-talk item. The old combination of knockabouts or of swell andclown has for the most part disappeared; the Poluskis, The Terry Twins, and Dale and O'Malley are perhaps the last survivors. The modern idea isthe foolish fellow and the dainty lady, who are not, I think, soattractive as the old style. Personally, I am always drawn to a hallwhere Dale and O'Malley are billed. "The somewhat different comedians"is their own description of themselves, and the wonder is that theyshould have worked so long in partnership and yet succeeded in remaining"somewhat different. " But each has so welded his mood to the other thattheir joint humour is, as it were, a bond as spiritually indissoluble asmatrimony. You cannot conceive either Mr. Dale or Mr. O'Malley workingalone or with any other partner. I have heard them crack the same quipsand tell the same stories for the last five years, yet they always getthe same big laugh and the same large "hand. " That is a delightful traitabout the music-hall--the _entente_ existing between the performer andaudience. The favourites seem to be _en rapport_ even while waiting inthe wings, and the flashing of their number in the electric frame is thesignal for a hand of welcome and--in the outer halls--whistles andcries. The atmosphere becomes electric with good-fellowship. It is, asHarry Lauder used to sing, "just like being at home. " It must besplendid to be greeted in that manner every night of your life and--ifyou are working two or three halls--five times every night; to know thatsome one wants you, that some one whom you have never seen before lovesyou and is ready to pay good money away in order to watch you play thefool or be yourself. There they are, crowds of people with whom youhaven't the slightest acquaintance, all familiar with you, all longingto meet you again, and all applauding you before you have done anythingbut just walk on. They shout "Good Boy!" or "Bravo, Harry!" or George, or Ernest. It must indeed be splendid. You are all so--what is theword?--matey, isn't it? Yes, that's the note of the Londonhall--mateyness. You, up there, singing or dancing, have brought men andwomen together as nothing else, not even the club or saloon bar, can do;and they sit before you, enjoying you and themselves and each other. Strangers have been known to speak to one another under the mellowatmosphere which you have created by singing to them of the universalthings: love, food, drink, marriage, birth, death, misfortune, festival, cunning, frivolity and--oh, the thousand things that make up our dailyday. 

There is just one man still among us who renders these details of theCockney's daily day in more perfect fashion than any of his peers. He isof the old school, I admit, but he is nevertheless right on the spotwith his points and his psychology. His name is Harry Champion. Perhapsyou have seen him and been disgusted with what you would call thevulgarity of his songs. But what you call his vulgarity, my dears, isjust everyday life; and everyday life is always disgusting to the funnylittle Bayswaterats, who are compact of timidity and pudibonderie. Theelderly adolescent has no business at the music-hall; his place is theBaptist Chapel or some other place remote from all connection with thissplendid world of London, tragic with suffering and song, high endeavourand defeat. It is people of this kidney who find Harry Champion vulgar. His is the robust, Falstaffian humour of old England, which, I am gladto think, still exists in London and still pleases Londoners, in spiteof efforts to Gallicize our entertainments and substitute obscenity andthe salacious leer for honest fun and the frank roar of laughter. If youwant to hear the joy of living interpreted in song and dance, then go tothe first hall where the name of Harry Champion is billed, and hear himsing "Boiled Beef and Carrots, " "Baked Sheep's Heart stuffed with Sageand Onions, " "Whatcher, me Old Brown Son!" "With me old Hambone, ""William the Conqueror, " "Standard Bread. " If you are sad, you will feelbetter. If you are suicidal, you will throw the poison away, and youwill not be the first man whose life has been saved by a low comedian. You may wonder why this eulogy of food in all these songs. Theexplanation is simple. In the old days, the music-hall was just adrinking den, and all the jolly songs were in praise of drink. Now thatall modern halls are unlicensed, and are, more or less, family affairsto which Mr. Jenkinson may bring the wife and the children, and whereyou can get nothing stronger than non-alcoholic beers, or dry ginger, the Bacchanalian song is out of place. Next to drinking, of course, theLondoner loves eating. Mr. Harry Champion, with the insight of genius, has divined this, and therefore he sings about food, winning muchapplause, personal popularity, and, I hope, much money. 

Watch his audience as he sings. Mark the almost hypnotic hold he hasover them; not only over pit and gallery but over stalls as well, andthe well-groomed loungers who have just dropped in. I defy any saneperson to listen to "Watcher, me Old Brown Son!" without chortles ofmerriment, profound merriment, for you don't laugh idly at HarryChampion. His gaiety is not the superficial gaiety of the funny man whomakes you laugh but does nothing else to you. He does you good. Ihonestly believe that his performance would beat down the frigid steelramparts that begird the English "lady. " His songs thrill and tickle youas does the gayest music of Mozart. They have not the mere lightness ofmerriment, but, like that music, they have the deep-plumbing gaiety ofthe love of life, for joy and sorrow. 

But let us leave the front of the house and wander in back of a typicalhall. Here is an overcharged atmosphere, feverish of railway-station. There is an entire lack of any system; everything apparently confusedrush. Artists dashing out for a second house many miles away. Artistsdashing in from their last hall, some fully dressed and made-up, othersswearing at their dressers and dragging baskets upstairs, knowing thatthey have three minutes in which to dress and make-up before their call. As one rushes in with a cheery "Evening, George!" to the stage-doorkeeper, he is met by the "boy"--the "boy" being usually a middle-agedex-Army man of 45 or 50. 

"Mr. Merson's on, sir. "

"Righto!"

He dashes into his dressing-room, which he shares with three others, andthen it is _Vesti la giubba_. . . . The dressing-room is a long, narrowroom, with a slab running the length of the wall, and four chairs. Theslab is backed by a long, low mirror, and is littered with make-up tinsand pots. His dresser hurls himself on the basket, as though he owed ita grudge. He tears off the lid. He dives head foremost into a foam oftrousers, coats, and many-coloured shirts. He comes to the surfacebreathless, having retrieved a shapeless mass of stuff. He tears piecesof this stuff apart, and flings them, with apparent malice, at hischief, and, somehow, they seem to stay where he flings them. The chiefshouts from a cloud of orange wig and patchwork shirt for asoda-and-milk, and from some obscure place of succour there actuallyappears a soda-and-milk. A hand darts from the leg of a revolving pairof trousers, grabs the glass and takes a loud swig. The boy appears atthe door. 

"Mr. Merson coming off, sir!"

"Right-_o_! and blast you!"

"No good blasting me, sir!"

From far away, as from another world, he hears the murmur of a largebody of people, the rolling of the drum, the throbbing of thedouble-bass, the wail of the fiddles, sometimes the thud of thewooden-shoe dancer, and sometimes a sudden silence as the music dimsaway to rubbish for the big stunt of the trapeze performer. 

He subsides into a chair. The dresser jams a pair of side-spring bootson his feet while he himself adjusts the wig and assaults his face withsticks of paint. 

The boy appears again. He shoots his bullet head through the door, aggressively. "Mr. Benson, _please_!" This time he is really cross. Clearly he will fight Mr. Benson before long. 

But Mr. Benson dashes from his chair and toddles downstairs, and is justin time to slip on as the band finishes his symphony for the fourthtime. Once on, he breathes more freely, for neglect of the time-sheet isa terrible thing, and involves a fine. If your time is 8. 20, it is yourbounden duty to be in the wings ready to go on at 8. 17; otherwise . . . Trouble and blistering adjectives. 

While he is on the boy is chasing round the dressing-rooms for the "nextcall. " This happens to be a black-face comedian, who is more punctualthan Mr. Benson. He is all in order, and at the call: "Mr. Benson's on, Harry!" he descends and stands in the wings, watching with cold butfriendly gaze the antics of Mr. Benson, and trying to sense the temperof the house. Mr. Benson is at work. In another minute he will be atwork, too. Mr. Benson is going well--he seems to have got the house. Hewonders whether he will get the house--or the bird. He is about to giveus something American: to sing and dance to syncopated melody. Americamay not have added great store to the world's music, but at least shehas added to the gaiety of nations. She has given us ragtime, the voiceof the negroid Bacchus, which has flogged our flagging flesh to newsensations; she has given us songs fragrant of Fifth Avenue, and withthe wail of the American South; and she has given us nigger comedians. Harry doesn't much care whether he "goes" or not. They are aphilosophical crowd, these Vaudevillians. If one of them gets the bird, he has the sympathy of the rest of the bill. Rotten luck. If he goeswell, he has their smiles. Of course, there are certain jealousies hereas in every game; but very few. You see, they never know. . . . The starsnever know when their reign will end, and they, who were oncebill-toppers, will be shoved in small type in obscure corners of thebill at far-distant provincial halls. That is why the halls, likejournalism, is such a great game. You never know. . . . The unhappiest ofthe whole bill of a hall are "first call" and "last call"; nobody isthere to listen to "first call"; everybody has bolted by the time "lastcall" is on. Only the orchestra and the electricians remain. They, likethe poor, are always with them. 

After the show, the orchestra usually breaks up into parties for a finaldrink, or sometimes fraternizes with the last call and makes a bunch forsupper at Sam Isaacs'. After supper, home by the last cart to Camberwellor Camden Town, seeking--and, if not too full of supper, finding--achaste couch at about two a. M. The star, of course, does nothing sovulgar. He motors home to Streatham or St. John's Wood or ClaphamCommon, and plays billiards or cards until the small hours. A curiouswave of temperance lately has been sweeping over the heads of theprofession, and a star seldom has a drink until after the show. The daysare gone when the lion comique would say: "No, laddie, I don't drink. Nothing to speak of, that is. I just have ten or twelve--just enough tomake me think I'm drunk. Then I keep on until I think I'm sober. Then I_know_ I'm drunk!" They are beginning, unfortunately for theiraudiences, to take themselves seriously. This is a pity, for the morespontaneous and inane they are, the more they are in their place on thevaudeville stage. There is more make-believe and hard work on the hallsto-day, and I think they are none the better for it. As soon as artbecomes self-conscious, its end is near; and that, I am afraid, is whatis happening to-day. A quieter note has crept into the whole thing, amore facile technique; and if you develop technique you must develop itat the expense of every one of those more robust and essentialqualities. The old entertainers captured us by deliberate unprovokedassault on our attention. But to-day they do not take us by storm. Theywoo us and win us slowly, by happy craft; and though your admiration isfinally wrung from you, it is technique you are admiring--nothing more. All modern art--the novel, the picture, the play, the song--is dying oftechnique. 

I have only the very slightest acquaintance with those gorgeouscreatures--the £200 a week men--who top the bill to-day; only theacquaintance of an occasional drink in their rooms. But I have known, and still know, many of the rank and file, and delightful people theyare. As a boy of fifteen, I remember meeting, on a seaside front, amember of a troupe then appearing called The Boy Guardsmen. He was asweet child. Fourteen years old he was, and he gave me cigarettes, andhe drank rum and stout, and was one of the most naïve and cleanlysimple youths I ever met. He had an angelic trust in the good ofeverything and everybody. He worshipped me because I bought him a bookhe wanted. He believed that the ladies appearing in the same bill at hishall were angels. He loved the manager of his troupe as a great-heartedgentleman. He thought his sister was the most radiant and high-souledgirl that Heaven had yet sent to earth. And it was his business to sing, twice nightly, some of the smuttiest songs I have heard on any stage. Yet he knew exactly why the house laughed, and what portions of thesongs it laughed at. He knew that the songs went because they weresmutty, yet such was his innocence that he could not understand why smutshould not be laughed at. He was a dear!

There was another family whom I still visit. Father and Mother areComedy Acrobats and Jugglers. Night by night they appear in spangledtights, and Father resins his hands in view of the audience, and lightlytosses the handkerchief to the wings; and then bends a stout knee, andcries "Hup!" and catches Mumdear on the spring and throws her in adouble somersault. There are two girls of thirteen and fifteen, and adot of nine; and they regard Dad and Mumdear just as professional pals, never as parents. This is Dad's idea; he dislikes being a father, but heenjoys being an elder brother, and leading the kids on in mischief orjolly times. 

I was having drinks one Saturday night, after the show, with Dad, in ascintillating Highbury saloon, when there was a sudden commotion in thepassage. A cascade of voices; a chatter of feet; the yelping of a dog. 

"What's that?" I murmured, half interested. 

"Only the bother and the gawdfers, " he answered. 

"Eh?"

"I said it's the bother and the gawdfers. . . . Rhyming slang, silly ass. The Missus and the kids. Bother-and-strife . . . Wife. Gawd-forbids . . . Kids. See? Here they come. No more mouth-shooting for us, now. "

They came. Mumdear came first--very large, submerged in a feather boaand a feathered hat! salmon pink as to the bust, cream silk as to theskirt. The kids came next, two of the sweetest, merriest girls I know. Miss Fifteen simply tumbled with brown curls and smiles; she was of TheGay Glowworms, a troupe of dancers. Miss Thirteen tripped over the dogand entered with a volley of giggles and a tempest of light stockingedlegs, which spent themselves at once when she observed me. In a wink shebecame the demure maiden. She had long, straight hair to the waist, andthe pure candour of her face gave her the air of an Italian madonna. Shewas of The Casino Juveniles. We had met before, so she sidled up to meand inquired how I was and what's doing. Within half a minute I wasbesieged by tossing hair and excited hands, and an avalanche of talkabout shop, what they were doing, where they were this week, where next, future openings, and so forth; all of which was cut short by thegood-humouredly gruff voice of the landlord, inquiring--

"That young lady over fourteen?"

"Well . . . Er . . . She looks it, don't she?" said Dad. 

"Dessay she does. But is she?"

"Well . . . Tell you the truth, Ernest, she ain't. But she will be soon. "

"Well, she can come back then. But she's got to go now. "

"Righto! Come on, Joyce. You got the bird. Here, Maudie, take her home. Both of you. Straight home, mind. And get the supper ready. And don'tforget to turn the dog out. And here--get yourselves some chocolates, little devils. " He pulled out a handful of silver. "There you are--allthe change I've got. "

He gave Maudie four shillings, and Joyce half a crown--for chocolates;and Maudie tripped out with flustered hair and laughing ribbons, andJoyce fell over the dog, and the swing-doors caught her midwise, andthere was a succession of screams fainting into the distance, and atlast silence. 

"Thank God they're gone, bless the little devils!" And Dad raised hisdry ginger in salutation; while Mumdear allowed me to get her aport-and-lemonade. It had apparently been a stiff show. 

"Funny, but . . . If you notice it . . . When one thing goes wrongeverything goes. First off, Arthur wasn't there to conduct. His leaderhad to take first three turns, and he doesn't know us properly and keptmissing the cues for changes. See, we have about six changes in ourmusic, and when you kind of get used to doing a stunt to 'MysteriousRag, ' it sort of puts you off if the band is still doing 'Nights ofGladness. ' See? Then the curtain stuck, and we was kept hanging aboutfor a minute, and had to speed up. Then one of our ropes give, and Ithought to myself: 'That's put the fair old khybosh on it, that has. 'Gave me--well, you know, put me a bit nervy, like. We missed twice. Least, George says I missed, but I say he did. So one thing and anotherit's been a bad night. However, we went all right, so here's doing itagain, sonny. Thumbs up!"

She beamed upon me a very large stage beam, as though she had got therange of the gallery and meant to reach it. But it was sincere, andthough she makes three of me, she is a darling, very playful, verymotherly, very strong-minded. Indeed, a Woman. She fussed with thefeathers of her boa, and sat upright, as though conscious of herathletic proportions and the picture she was making against the gildedbackground of the saloon. She had an arm that--but I can say no morethan that paraphrase of Meredith: She Had An Arm. When you remember thatoften four times nightly she holds her husband--no light-weight, Iassure you--balanced on her right, while, with her left, she juggleswith a bamboo-table and a walking-stick, you can realize that She HasAn Arm, and you can understand the figure she cuts in commonplaceintercourse. You are simply overwhelmed physically and morally. 

"But look here, sonny, why not come home and have a bit of supper withus? That is, if there is any. But come round, and gnaw the oldhambone--what? I think we got some claret and I know George's got a dropof Three-Star. Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern tour with theWhite Bird Company, so of course we're in a devil of muddle. George'ssister's round there, packing her. But if you'll put up with the damnedold upset, why, come right along. "

So we drank up, and I went right along to a jolly little flat nearHighbury Quadrant. As we entered the main room, I heard a high, thinvoice protesting--

 But there were times, dear, When you made me feel so bad!

And there, flitting about the room in dainty lace petticoat, and littleelse, was young Beryl, superintending her aunt's feverish struggles withpaint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk stockings, socks, andwraps, snatching these articles from a voluminous wardrobe and tossingthem, haphazard, into a monumental dressing-basket, already half-fullwith two life-size teddy-bears. 

She was a bright little maid, and, though we had not met before, we madefriends at once. She had a mass of black curls, eyes dancing with elfinlights, a face permanently flushed, and limbs never in repose. She was, even in sleep--as I have seen her since--wonderfully alive, with thathectic energy that is born of spending oneself to the last ounceunceasingly; in her case, the magnetic, self-consuming energy of talentprematurely developed. Her voice had distinctive quality, unusual inlittle girls of nine. When she talked, it was with perfect articulationand a sense of the value and beauty of words. Her manners were prettilywayward, but not precocious. She moved with the quiet self-possessionof one who has something to do and knows just how to do it, one who tookher little self seriously but not conceitedly. 

On the stage she has been the delight of thousands. Her gay smile, herdelicate graces, and her calm, unfaltering stage manner have touched thehearts of all sorts and conditions, from boxes to bar. Eight times aweek, six evenings and two matinées, she was booked to take the stagefrom the rise of the curtain and leave it for scarcely more than twominutes at a time until the fall. This was by no means her first show. Before that she had been pantomime fairy, orphan child in melodrama, waif in a music-hall sketch, millionaire's pet in a Society play, amischievous boy in a popular farce, dancer in a big ballet, and now thelead in a famous fairy play, at a salary of ten pounds a week. No wonderDad and Mumdear, and even the elder girls, regarded her with a touch ofawe and worship. But fêted as she is, she has never been spoilt; and sheremains, in spite of her effervescent life, a genuine child. The pet ofthe crowd behind the scenes, the pet of the house in front, she isaccustomed, every night, to salvoes of applause, to flowers left at thestage-door, and to boxes of chocolates handed over the footlights. Nightafter night, in dance or make-believe of life, she spends herself toexhaustion for the pleasure of the multitude; night after night, in atinsel-world of limelight and grease-paint, she plays at being herself. 

I rather wondered what she thought of it all, and whether she enjoyedit; but, like most little girls, she was shy of confidences. Perhaps shewondered at it all, perhaps sometimes she felt very tired of it all--thenoise, the dust, the glamour, and the rush. But she would not admit it. She would only admit her joy at the ten pounds a week, out of whichMumdear would be able to send her favourite cousin Billie to theseaside. So I had to leave it at that, and help with the packing; andat about a quarter to one in the morning supper was announced as ready, and we all sat down. 

I forget what we ate. There was some mystery of eggs, prepared by Joyceand Maudie. There were various preserved meats, and some fruit, and someCamembert, and some very good Sauterne, to all of which you helpedyourself. There was no host or hostess. You just wandered round thetable, and forked what you wanted, and ate it, and then came up formore. When we had done eating, Dad brought out a bottle of excellent oldbrandy, and Joyce and Maudie made tea for the ladies, and Beryl sat onmy knee until half-past two and talked scandal about the other membersof the White Bird Company. 

At three o'clock I broke up a jolly evening, and departed, Maudie andJoyce accompanying me to Highbury Corner, where I found a vagrant cab. 

Perhaps after the cleansing of the London stage, its most remarkablefeature is this sudden invasion of it by the child. There has been muchfoolish legislation on the subject, but, though it is impossibleartistically to justify the presence of children in drama, I think Iwould not have them away. I think they have given the stage, professionally, something that it is none the worse for. 

All men, of course, are actors. In all men exists that desire to escapefrom themselves, to be somebody else, which is expressed, in thenursery, by their delight in "dressing up, " and, in later life, by theirdelight in watching others pretend. But the child is the most happyactor, for to children acting is as natural as eating, and their stagework always convinces because they never consciously act--never, thatis, aim at preconceived effects, but merge their personalities wholly inthis or that idea and allow themselves to be driven by it. When to thiscommon instinct is added an understanding of stage requirements and asharp sense of the theatre, the result is pure delight. We live in alittle age, and, in the absence of great figures, we are perhaps proneto worship little things, and especially to cultivate to excess thewonder-child and often the pseudo-wonder-child. But the giftedstage-children have a distinct place, for they give us no striving afterfalse quantities, no theatricality, and their effects are in proportionto the strength of their genius. Of course, when they are submitted tothe training of a third-rate manager, they become mere mechanical dolls, full of shrill speech and distorted posings that never once touch theaudience. You have examples of this in any touring melodrama. Theseyoungsters are taught to act, to model themselves on this or that adultmember of the company, are made conscious of an audience, and arecarefully prevented from being children. The result is a horror. Thechild is only an effective actor so long as it does not "act. " As soonas these youngsters reach the age of fifteen or sixteen the dramaticfaculty is stilled, and lies dormant throughout adolescence. They areuseless on the stage, for, beginning to "find themselves, " they becomeconscious artists, and, in the theatrical phrase, it doesn't come off. It is hardly to be expected that it should, for acting, of all the arts, most demands a knowledge of the human mind which cannot be encompassedeven by genius at seventeen. That is why no child can ever play such apart as that of the little girl in Hauptmann's "Hannele. " Intuitioncould never cover it. Nor should children ever be set to play it. Thechild of melodrama is an impossibility and an ugliness. Children on thestage must be childish, and nothing else. They must not be immature menand women. Superficially, of course, as I have said, every child oftalent becomes world-weary and sophisticated; the bright surface of themind is dulled with things half-perceived. But this, the result ofmoving in an atmosphere of hectic brilliance, devoid of spiritualnourishment, is not fundamental: it is but a phase. Old-fashioned as theidea may be, it is still true that artificial excitement is useful, indeed necessary, to the artist; and conditions of life that wouldspoil or utterly destroy the common person are, to him, entirelyinnocuous, since he lives on and by his own self. And, though some stagechildren may become prematurely wise, in the depths of their souls, theymust preserve, fresh and lovely, the child-spirit, the secret gloryshared by all children. If they lose that they have justification of anykind. 

There was a little girl on the London stage some few years ago whom Ihave always remembered with joy. I first saw her accidentally at aLyceum pantomime, into which I strolled after a dull evening in FleetStreet. 

The theatre was drowned in a velvet gloom. Here and there sharp lampsstung the dusks. There was a babble of voices. The lights of theorchestra gleamed subtly. The pit was a mist of lilac, which shifted andever shifted. A chimera of fetid faces swam above the gallery rail. Waveafter wave of lifeless heads rolled on either side of me. 

Then there was a quick bell; the orchestra blared the chord on, and Isat up. Something seemed about to happen. Back at the bar was a clamourof glass and popping cork, and bashful cries of "Order, please!" Thecurtain rushed back on a dark, blank stage. One perceived, dimly, a highsombre draping, very far upstage. There was silence. Next moment, frombetween the folds, stole a wee slip of a child in white, who stood, poised like a startled fawn. Three pale spot-limes swam uncertainly fromroof and wings, drifted a moment, then picked her up, focusing hergleaming hair and alabaster arms. I looked at the programme. 

It was Marjorie Carpenter. 

The conductor tapped. A tense silence; and then our ears were drenchedin the ballet music of Délibes. Over the footlights it surged, and, racing down-stage, little Marjorie Carpenter flung herself into it, caressing and caressed by it, shaking, as it seemed, little showers ofsound from her delighted limbs. On that high, vast stage, amid thecrashing speed of that music and the spattering fire of the side-drums, she seemed so frail, so lost, so alone that--oh! one almost ached forher. 

But then she danced: and if she were alone at first, she was not nowalone. She seemed at a step to people the stage with little companies ofdream. 

I say she danced, and I must leave it at that. She gave us more thandance; she gave us the spirit of Childhood, bubbling with delight, sofresh, so contagious that I could have wept for joy of it. It was athing of sheer lyrical loveliness, the lovelier, perhaps, because of itsvery waywardness and disregard of values. Here was no thing of trick andlimelight. It was Blake's "Infant Joy" materialized. She was a poem. 

In the heated theatre, where the opiate air rolled like a fog, we satentranced before her--the child, elfish and gay and hungry for thebeauty of life; the child, lit by a glamorous light. Far below thesurface this light burns, and seldom is its presence revealed, save bythose children who live very close to Nature: gipsy and forest children. But every child possesses it, whether bred in the whispering wood oramong sweetstuff shops and the Highbury 'buses; and I, for one, recognized it immediately this lovely child carried it over thefootlights of the Lyceum Theatre. 

Hither and thither she drifted like a white snowflake, but all the time. . . Dancing; and one had a sense of dumb amazement that so frail achild, her fair arms and legs as slender as a flower-stem, should sofill that stage and hold the rapt attention of a theatreful of people. Here was evidence of something stronger than mere mastery of ballettechnique. Perfect her dancing was. There was no touch of that automaticmovement so noticeable in most child dancers. When she went thus or so, or flitted from side to side of the stage, she clearly knew just why shedid it, why she went up-stage instead of down. But she had more thanmere technical perfection: she had personality, that strange, intangible something so rare in the danseuse, that wanders over thefootlights. The turn of a foot, the swift side look, the awakeningsmile, the nice lifting of an eyebrow--these things were spontaneous. Noamount of rehearsal or managerial thought could have produced effects sobrilliantly true to the moment. 

I am not exaggerating. I am speaking quite literally when I say that, for me, at that time, Marjorie Carpenter and her dancing were theloveliest things in London. She danced as no child has ever dancedbefore or since, though, of course, it would never do to say so. It wasthe most fragile, most evanescent genius that London had seen; andnobody cared, nobody recognized it. It attracted no more attention thatthe work of any other child-actress. Yet you never saw such gazelle-likeswiftness and grace. 

When she had completed one dance, a new back-cloth fell, and she dancedagain and yet again. I forget what she danced, but it spoke to me of athousand forgotten things of childhood. I know that I touchedfinger-tips with something more generously pure and happy than I had metfor years. Through the hush of lights the sylvan music stole, andMarjorie Carpenter stole with it, and every step of her whispered ofApril and May. 

The curtain fell. I was jerked back to common things. But I was in nomood for them. The house applauded. It thought it was applaudingMarjorie Carpenter for her skill as a dancer. It was really worshippingsomething greater--that elusive quality which she had momentarilysnatched from nothing and presented to them: the eternal charm andmystery of Childhood. 

A CHINESE NIGHT

LIMEHOUSE

_AT LIMEHOUSE_

 _Yellow man, yellow man, where have you been? Down the Pacific, where wonders are seen. Up the Pacific, so glamorous and gay, Where night is of blue, and of silver the day. _

 _Yellow man, yellow man, what did you there? I loved twenty maids who were loving and fair. Their cheeks were of velvet, their kisses were fire, I looked at them boldly and had my desire. _

 _Yellow man, yellow man, what do you know? That living is lovely wherever I go; And lovelier, I say, since when soft winds have passed The tides will race over my bosom at last. _

 _Yellow man, yellow man, why do you sigh? For flowers that are sweet, and for flowers that die. For days in fair waters and nights in strange lands. For faces forgotten and little lost hands. _

A CHINESE NIGHT

LIMEHOUSE

It was eight o'clock. We had dined in Soho, and conversed amiably withItalian waiters and French wine-men. There were now many slack hoursbefore us, and nothing wherewith to tighten them. We stood in thelow-lit gaiety of Old Compton Street, and wondered. We were tired ofhalls and revues; the theatres had started work; there was nothing leftbut to sit in beer-cellars and listen to dreary bands playing ragtimesand bilious waltzes. 

Now it is a good tip when tired of the West, and, as the phrase goes, ata loose end, to go East, young man, go East. You will spot a winnerevery time, if it is entertainment you seek, by mounting the firstEast-bound omnibus that passes. For the East is eternally fresh, becauseit is alive. The West, like all things of fashion, is but a corpseelectrified. They are so tired, these lily-clad ladies and white-frontedgentlemen, of their bloodless, wine-whipped frivolities. They want toenjoy themselves very badly, but they do not know how to do it. Theyknow that enjoyment only means eating the same dinner at a differentrestaurant, and afterwards meeting the same tired people, or seeing thesame show, the same songs, jests, dances at different houses. ButEastward . . . There, large and full, blossoms Life--a rather repellentLife, perhaps, for Life is always that. Hatred, filth, love, battle, anddeath--all elemental things are here, undisguised; and if elementalthings repel you, my lamb, then you have no business to be on thisplanet. Night, in the particular spots of the East to which these pagestake you, shows you Life in the raw, stripped of its silken wrappings;and it is of passionate interest to those for whom humanity is the onlyBook. In the West pleasure is a business; in the East it is recreation. In the East it may be a thinner, poorer body, but it is alive. Thepeople are sick, perhaps, with toil; but below that sickness there is alust for enjoyment that lights up every little moment of their evening, as I shall show you later, when we come to Bethnal Green, Hoxton, andthe athletic saloons. You may listen to Glazounoff's "L'AutomneBacchanale" at the Palace Theatre, danced by Pavlova, but I should notlook in Shaftesbury Avenue or Piccadilly for its true spirit. Rather, Ishould go to Kingsland Road, Tunnel Gardens, Jamaica Road; to thetrafficked highways, rent with naphthas, that rush about East IndiaDock. There, when the lamps are lighted, and bead the night with tears, and the sweet girls go by, and throw their little laughter to theboys--there you have your true Bacchanales. 

So, leaving the fixed grin of decay in Coventry Street, we mounted amotor-'bus, and dashed gaily through streets of rose and silver--it wasOctober--and dropped off by the Poplar Hippodrome, whose harsh signs litthe night to sudden beauty. 

To turn from East India Dock Road to West India Dock Road is to turn, contradictorily, from West to East, from a fury of lights and noise andfaces into a stillness almost chaste. At least, chaste is the first wordyou think of. In a few seconds you feel that it is the wrong epithet. Something . . . Something there is in this dusky, throttled byway thatseems to be crawling into your blood. The road seems to slink beforeyou; and you know that, once in, you can only get out by retracing yoursteps or crossing into the lost Isle of Dogs. Against the wrath ofOctober cloud, little low shops peer at you. In the sharp shadows theirlights fall like swords across your path. The shuttered gloom of theeastern side shows strangely menacing. Each whispering house seems anabode of dread things. Each window seems filled with frightful eyes. Each corner, half-lit by a timid gas-jet, seems to harbour unholyfeatures. A black man, with Oriental features, brushes against you. Youcollide with a creeping yellow man. He says something--it might beChinese or Japanese or Philippinese jargon. A huge Hindoo shuffles, cat-like, against the shops. A fried-fish bar, its windows covered withScandinavian phrases, flings a burst of melodious light for which youare grateful. 

No; chaste was certainly not the right word. Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be thatattendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people wholove it because their deeds are evil. 

But now we come to Pennyfields, to the thunderous shadows of the greatDock, and to that low-lit Causeway that carries such subtle tales offlowered islands, white towns, green bays, and sunlight like wine. Atthe mouth of Pennyfields is a cluster of Chinks. You may see at oncethat they dislike you. 

But my friend Sam Tai Ling will give us better welcome, I think; so weslip into the Causeway, with its lousy shop-fronts decorated withChinese signs, among them the Sign of the Foreign Drug Open Lamp. Atevery doorway stand groups of the gallant fellows, eyeing appreciativelysuch white girls as pass that way. You taste the curious flavour of theplace--its mixture of camaraderie and brutality, of cruelty and pity andtears; of precocious children and wrecked men--and you smell itsperfume, the week before last. But here is the home of Tai Ling, one ofthe most genial souls to be met in a world of cynicism and dyspepsia: alovable character, radiating sweetness and a tolerably naughty goodnessin this narrow street. Not immoral, for to be immoral you must firstsubscribe to some conventional morality. Tai Ling does not. You cannotdo wrong until you have first done right. Tai Ling has not. He is justnon-moral; and right and wrong are words he does not understand. He isin love with life and song and wine and the beauty of women. The worldto him is a pause on a journey, where one may take one's idle pleasurewhile others strew the path with mirth and roses. He knows only twodivisions of people: the gay and the stupid. He never turns aside frompleasure, or resists an invitation to the feast. In fact, by ourstandards a complete rogue, yet the most joyous I have known. Were youto visit him and make his acquaintance, you would thank me for theintroduction to so charming a character. I never knew a man with soseductive a smile. Many a time it has driven the virtuously indignantheart out of me. An Oriental smile, you know, is not an affair of aswift moment. It has a birth and a beginning. It awakens, hesitates, grows, and at last from the sad chrysalis emerges the butterfly. AChinese smile at the full is one of the subtlest expressions of whichthe human face is capable. 

Mr. Sam Tai Ling keeps a restaurant, and, some years ago, when my wayswere cast about West India Dock Road, I knew him well. He was an old manthen; he is an old man now: the same age, I fancy. Supper with him issomething to remember--I use the phrase carefully. You will find, aftersupper, that soda-mints and potass-water are more than grateful andcomforting. 

When we entered he came forward at once, and such was his Celestialcourtesy that, although we had recently dined, to refuse supper wasimpossible. He supped with us himself in the little upper room, lit bygas, and decorated with bead curtains and English Christmas-numbersupplements. A few oily seamen were manipulating the chop-sticks andthrusting food to their mouths with a noise that, on a clear night, Ishould think, could be heard as far as Shadwell. When honourable guestswere seated, honourable guests were served by Mr. Tai Ling. There werenoodle, shark's fins, chop suey, and very much fish and duck, andlychee fruits. The first dish consisted of something that resembled aCornish pasty--chopped fish and onion and strange meats mixed togetherand heavily spiced, encased in a light flour-paste. Then followed aplate of noodle, some bitter lemon, and finally a pot of China teaprepared on the table: real China tea, remember, all-same Shan-tung; notthe backwash of the name which is served in Piccadilly tea-shops. Thetea is carefully prepared by one who evidently loves his work, and isserved in little cups, without milk or sugar, but flavoured withchrysanthemum buds. 

As our meal progressed, the café began to fill; and the air bubbled withthe rush of labial talk from the Celestial company. We were the onlywhite things there. All the company was yellow, with one or twotan-skinned girls. 

But we were out for amusement, so, after the table hospitality, Sam tookus into the Causeway. Out of the coloured darkness of Pennyfields camethe muffled wail of reed instruments, the heart-cry of the Orient; noiseof traffic; bits of honeyed talk. On every side were following feet: thefirm, clear step of the sailor; the loud, bullying boots of the tough;the joyful steps that trickle from "The Green Man"; and, through allthis chorus, most insistently, the stealthy, stuttering steps of thesatyr. For your Chink takes his pleasure where he finds it; not, perhaps, the pleasure that you would approve, for probably you are notof that gracious temperament that accords pity and the soft hand to thehabits of your fellows. Yet so many are the victims of the flesh, andfor so little while are we here, that one can but smile and be kind. Besides, these yellow birds come from an Eastern country, where they donot read English law or bother about such trifles as the age of consent. 

Every window, as always, was closely shuttered, but between the jointsshot jets of slim light, and sometimes you could catch the chanting ofa little sweet song last sung in Rangoon or Swatow. One of these songswas once translated for me. I should take great delight in printing ithere, but, alas! this, too, comes from a land where purity crusades areunknown. I dare not conjecture what Bayswater would do to me if Ireproduced it. 

We passed through Pennyfields, through clusters of gladly coloured men. Vaguely we remembered leaving Henrietta Street, London, and dining inOld Compton Street, Paris, a few hours ago. And now--was this Paris orLondon or Tuan-tsen or Taiping? Pin-points of light pricked the mist inevery direction. A tom-tom moaned somewhere in the far-away. 

It was now half-past ten. The public-house at the extreme end wasbecoming more obvious and raucous. But, at a sudden black door, Samstopped. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he slid through its opening, andwe followed. Stairs led straight from the street to a basementchamber--candle-lit, with two exits. I had been there before, but to mycompanions it was new. We were in luck. A Dai Nippon had berthed a fewhours previously, and here was its crew, flinging their wages fast overthe fan-tan tables, or letting it go at Chausa-Bazee or Pachassee. 

It was a well-kept establishment where agreeable fellows might play agame or so, take a shot of opium, or find other varieties of Orientaldelight. The far glooms were struck by low-toned lanterns. Couches layabout the walls; strange men decorated them and three young girls insocks, idiotically drunk. Small tables were everywhere, each tableobscured in a fog of yellow faces and greasy hair. The huge scorbuticproprietor, Ho Ling, swam noiselessly from table to table. A lank figurein brown shirting, its fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe, sprawled in another corner. The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many growings, opium, betel-nut, bhang, and moist fleshallied themselves in one grand assault on the nostrils. Perhaps youwonder how they manage to keep these places clean. That may be answeredin two words: they don't. 

On a table beneath one of the lanterns squatted a musician with a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody of sixrepeated notes. 

Suddenly, at one of the tables was a slight commotion. A wee slip of afellow had apparently done well at fan-tan, for he slid from his corner, and essayed a song--I fancy it was meant to be "Robert E. Lee"--in hisseaman's pidgin. At least, his gestures were those of a ragtimecomedian, and the tune bore some faint resemblance. Or is it that theragtime kings have gone to the antiquities of the Orient for theirmelodies? But he had not gone far before Ho Ling, with the dignity of amandarin, removed him. And the smell being a little too strong for us, we followed, and strolled to the Asiatics' Home. 

The smell--yes. There is nothing in the world like the smell of aChinatown in a Western city. It is a grand battle between a variety ofodours, but opium prevails. The mouth of West India Dock Road is foulwith it. For you might as well take away a navvy's half-pint of beer asdeprive a Chink of his shot of dope and his gambling-table. Opium isforbidden under the L. C. C. Regulations, and therefore the Chink sleepsat a licensed lodging-house and goes elsewhere for his fun. Every otherhouse in this quarter is a seamen's lodging-house. These hotels have nolifts, and no electric light, and no wine-lists. You pay threepence anight, and you get the accommodation you pay for. But then, they are notfor silk-clad ossifications such as you and me. They are for the lustycoloured lads who work the world with steam and sail: men whose liveslie literally in their great hands, who go down to the sea in ships andsometimes have questionable business in great waters. 

These India Docks are like no other docks in the world. About theirgates you find the scum of the world's worst countries; all the peoplesof the delirious Pacific of whom you have read and dreamed--Arab, Hindoo, Malayan, Chink, Jap, South Sea Islander--a mere catalogue of thenames is a romance. Here are pace and high adventure; the tang of theEast; fusion of blood and race and creed. A degenerate dross it is, but, do you know, I cannot say that I don't prefer it to the well-spun goldthat is flung from the Empire on boat-race nights. Place these fellowsagainst our blunt backgrounds, under the awful mystery of the City'snight, and they present the finest spectacle that London affords. 

You may see them in their glory at the Asiatics' Home, to which we nowcame. A delightful place, this home for destitute Orientals; for it hasa veranda and a compound, stone beds and caged cubicles, no baths and abilliard-table; and extraordinary precautions are taken againstindulgence of the wicked tastes of its guests. Grouped about the giantstove are Asiatics of every country in wonderful toilet creations. Amild-eyed Hindoo, lacking a turban, has appropriated a bath-towel. AMalay appears in white cotton trousers, frock-coat, brown boots, andstraw hat; and a stranded Burmese cuts no end of a figure in under-vest, steward's jacket, yellow trousers and squash hat. All carry a knife or akrees, and all are quite pleasant people, who will accept your Salaamand your cigarette. Rules and regulations for impossibly good conducthang on the walls in Hindustani, Japanese, Swahili, Urdu, and Malayan. All food is prepared and cooked by themselves, and the slaughter of ananimal for the table must be witnessed and prayed upon by those of theirown faith. Out in the compound is a skittle-alley, where the boys strolland play; and costumes, people, and setting have all the appearance ofthe _ensemble_ of a cheap revue. 

I suppose one dare not write on Limehouse without mentioningopium-rooms. Well, if one must, one must, though I have nothing of theexpected to tell you. I have known Limehouse for many years, and havesmiled many times at the articles that appear perennially on thewickedness of the place. Its name evokes evil tradition in the publicmind. There are ingenuous people who regard it as dangerous. I havealready mentioned its sinister atmosphere; but there is an end of it. There is nothing substantial. These are the people who will tell you ofthe lurking perils of certain quarters of London--how that there arestreets down which, even in broad daylight, the very police do notventure unaccompanied. You may believe that, if you choose; it is simplya tale for the soft-minded with a turn for the melodramatic. There is nosuch thing as a dangerous street in London. I have loafed and wanderedin every part of London, slums, foreign quarters, underground, anddocksides, and if you must have adventure in London, then you will haveto make your own. The two fiercest streets of the metropolis--DorsetStreet and Hoxton Street--are as safe for the wayfarer as Oxford Street;for women, safer. And the manners of Limehouse are certainly a lesson toStreatham Hill. 

But we are talking of opium. We left Mr. Tai Ling on the steps of theAsiatics' Home, and from there we wandered to High Street, Poplar, tothe house of a gracious gentleman from Pi-chi-li, not for opium but fora chat with him. For my companions had not smoked before, and I did notwant two helpless invalids on my hands at midnight. Those amazinglythrilling and amazingly ludicrous stories of East End opium-rooms aremainly, I may say, the work of journalistic specials. A journalisticspecial is a man who writes thrillingly on old-fashioned topics on whichhe is ill-informed. The moment he knows something about his subject heis not allowed to write; he ceases to be a special. Also, of course, ifa man, on sociological investigation, puts an initial pipe of opium ontop of a brandy or so--well, one can understand that even the interiorof the Bayswater omnibus may be a haunt of terror and wonder. Taking ajolt of "chandu" in a Limehouse room is about as exciting as taking amixed vermuth at the Leicester Lounge. 

The gracious gentleman received us affably. Through a curtained recesswas the small common room, where yellow and black men reclined, in apurple dusk, beaded with the lights of little lamps. The odour wassickly, the air dry. The gentleman wondered whether we would have aroom. No, we wouldn't; but I bought cigarettes, and we went upstairs tothe little dirty bedrooms. The bed is but a mattress with a pillow. There, if you are a dope-fiend, you may have your pipe and lamp, verycosy, and you may lock the door, and the room is yours until you havefinished. One has read, in periodicals, of the well-to-do people fromthe western end, who hire rooms here and come down, from time to time, for an orgy. That is another story for the nursery. White people dovisit the rooms, of course, but they are chiefly the white seamen of thelocality; and, in case you may ever feel tempted to visit any of theestablishments displaying the Sign of the Open Lamp, I may tell you thatyour first experiment will result in violent nausea, something akin tothe effect of the cigar you smoked when you were twelve, but heightenedto the _n_th power. Opium does nasty things to the yellow man; it doesnastier things to the white man. Not only does it wreck the body, but itengenders and inflames those curious vices to which allusion has beenmade elsewhere. If you do not believe me, then you may accept the wisdomof an unknown Formosan, who, three hundred years ago, published a tract, telling of the effects of the Open Lamp on the white man. They are, in aword, parallel with the effects of whisky on the Asiatic. Listen:--

 The opium is boiled in a copper pan. The pipe is in appearance like a short club. Depraved young men, without any fixed occupation, meet together by night and smoke; and it soon becomes a habit. Fruit and sweetmeats are provided for the sailors, and no charge is made for the first time, in order to tempt them. After a while they cannot stay away, and will forfeit all their property so as to buy the drug. Soon they find themselves beyond cure. If they omit smoking for a day, their faces become shrivelled, their lips stand open, and they seem ready to die. Another smoke restores vitality, but in three years they all die. 

So now you know. The philanthropic foreigner published his warning in1622. In 1915 . . . Well, walk down Pennyfields and exercise your nose, and calculate how much opium is being smoked in London to-day. 

Nobody troubles very much about Chinatown, except the authorities, andtheir interference is but perfunctory. The yellow men, after all, are, as Prologue to "Pagliacci" observes, but men like you, for joy orsorrow, the same broad heaven above them, the same wide world beforethem. They are but men like you, though the sanitary officials may doubtit. They _will_ sleep six and seven in one dirty bed, and no law ofLondon can change their ways. Anyway, they are peaceful, agreeablepeople, who ask nothing but to be allowed to go about their business andto be happy in their own way. They are shy birds, and detest beinglooked at, or talked to, or photographed, or written about. They don'twant white men in their restaurants, or nosing about their places. Theycarry this love of secrecy to strange lengths. Not so long ago a pressphotographer set out boldly to get pictures of Chinatown. He marched tothe mouth of Limehouse Causeway, through which, in the customary lightof grey and rose, many amiable creatures were gliding, levelled his nicenew Kodak, and got--an excellent picture of the Causeway after theearthquake. The entire street in his plate was deserted. 

Certain impressionable people--Cook's tourists and CivilServants--return from the East mumbling vague catchwords--mystic, elusive, subtle, haunting, alluring. These London Chinese are neithersubtle nor mystic. They are mostly materialist and straightforward; and, once you can gain their confidence, you will find yourself wonderfullyat home. But it has to be gained, for, as I have said, they are shy, andwere you to try to join a game of cards on a short acquaintance . . . Well, it would be easier to drop in for a cigarette with King George. Toget into a Grosvenor Square mansion on a ball night is a comparativelyeasy matter: swank and an evening suit will do it; nothing veryexclusive about those people. But the people of Limehouse, and, indeed, of any slum or foreign quarter, are exclusive; and to get into a Poplardope-house on bargain night demands the exercise of more Orientalingenuity than most of us possess. 

Only at the mid-January festival do they forget themselves and come outof their shells. Then things happen. The West India Dock Road is whippedto life. The windows shake with flowers, the roofs with flags. Lanternsare looped from house to house, and the slow frenzy of Oriental carnivalbegins. In the morning there is solemn procession, with joss-sticks, tothe cemetery, where prayers are held over the graves of departedcompatriots, and lamentations are carried out in native fashion, withsweet cakes, whisky, and song and gesture. In the evening--ah!--dancingin the halls with the white girls. Glamorous January evening . . . Yellowmen with much money to spend . . . Beribboned girls, gay, flaunting, andfond of curious kisses . . . Lighted lanterns swinging lithely on theirstrings . . . Noise, bustle, and laughter of the cafés . . . All thesethings light this little bit of London with an alluring Eastern flame. 

There was a time, years ago, when the East End was the East End--a landapart, with laws and customs of its own, cut off from civilization, andhaving no common ground with Piccadilly. But the motor-'bus has changedall that. It has so linked things and places that all individualcharacter has been swamped in a universal chaos, and there is nowneither East nor West. All lost nooks of London have been dug out andforced into the traffic line, and boundaries are things which existto-day only in the mind of the borough councillor. Hyde Park stretchesto Shadwell, Hampstead to Albert Docks. Soho is _vieux jeu_. LittleItaly is exploded. The Russian and Jewish quarters are growing stale andcommercial, and the London Docks are a region whose chief features areCockney warehouse clerks. This corner of Limehouse alone remainsdefiantly its Oriental self, no part of London; and I trust that it maynever become popular, for then there will be no spot to which one mayescape from the banalities of the daily day. 

But as we stood in the little bedroom of the gentleman from Pi-chi-lithe clock above Millwall Docks shot twelve crashing notes along thenight. The gentleman thrust a moon face through the dusky doorway toinquire if I had changed my mind. Would myself and honourable companionssmoke, after all? We declined, but he assured me that we should meetagain at Tai-Ling's café, and perhaps hospitality. . . . 

So we tumbled down the crazy stairs, through the room from which theChinks were fast melting, and into the midnight glitter of the endlessEast India Dock Road. We passed through streets of dark melancholy, through labyrinthine passages where the gas-jets splutteredasthmatically, under weeping railway arches, and at last were free ofthe quarter where the cold fatalism of the East combats the wistfuldubiety of the West. But the atmosphere, physical and moral, remainedwith us. Not that the yellow men are to blame for this atmosphere. Theevil of the place is rather that of Londoners, and the bitter nightmarespirit of the place is rather of them than of Asia. I said that therewas little wickedness in Chinatown, but one wickedness there is, whichis never spoken of in published articles; opium seems the only pointthat strangers can fasten on. Even if this wickedness were known, Idoubt if it would be mentioned. It concerns. . . . But I had better not. 

We looked back at Barking Road, where it dips and rises with a sweep aslovely as a flying bird's, and on the bashful little streets, whoselights chime on the darkness like the rounding of a verse. Strangestreets they are, where beauty is unknown and love but a grisly phantom;streets peopled, at this hour, with loose-lipped and uncomelygirls--mostly the fruit of a yellow-and-white union--and with otherthings not good to be talked of. I was philosophizing to my friend aboutthese things, and he was rhapsodizing to me about the stretch oflamplights, when a late 'bus for the Bank swept along. We took a flyingmount that shook the reek of Limehouse from our clothes and itsnastiness from our minds, and twenty minutes later we were taking afinal coffee at the "Monico. "

A DOMESTIC NIGHT

CLAPHAM COMMON

_THE LAMPLIT HOUR_

 _Dusk--and the lights of home Smile through the rain: A thousand smiles for those that come Homeward again. _

 _What though the night be drear With gloom and cold, So that there be one voice to hear, One hand to hold?_

 _Here, by the winter fire, Life is our own. Here, out of murk and mire, Here is our throne. _

 _Then let the wild world throng To pomp and power; And let us fill with love and song The lamplit hour. _

A DOMESTIC NIGHT

CLAPHAM COMMON

At six o'clock every evening London Bridge vomits its stream of tiredworkers, hurrying home, most of them living at Clapham Common or similarplaces with a different name. Some of them walk home along thosestraggling streets which, after many years, reach the near suburbs; someof them go by car or 'bus. All are weary. All are gay. They are GoingHome. 

I think it was Mr. Mark Sheridan who was singing, some few years back, that "All the girls are lover-ly by the seaside!" I do not know the poetresponsible for this sentiment, but I should like to take him to any ofthe London bridges and let him watch the crowd coming home at sixo'clock. He was all wrong, anyway. The girls are not lovely by theseaside. If there is one place where the sweetest girl is decidedlyplain and ill-kempt it is at the seaside. His song should read, "All thegirls are lover-ly up in London!" And they are, whether they bechorus-girls, typists, shop-girls, Reuter's messenger-girls, modistes, or factory girls. Do you know those delightful London children, thetailors' collectors, who "fetch it and bring it home"? Their job is totake out the work from the big tailoring establishments to the dozensand dozens of home workers, and to collect it from them at the appointedtime. You may easily recognize them by the large black-lining bundleswhich they carry so deftly under either arm. Mostly they are dear littlegirls of about fourteen, in short frocks, and mostly they are pretty. They have a casual manner, and they smile very winningly. Often theirlittle feet tramp twelve and fourteen miles a day delivering andcollecting; often they are sworn at by the foreman for being late; oftenthey are very unhappy, and hardly ever do they get more thanseven-and-sixpence a week. But they always smile: a little timidly, youknow, because they are so young and London is so full of perils; yea, though they work harder than any other sweated labourer--they smile. 

And over the bridges they come at nightfall, if they are not doingovertime, chattering and smiling, each with a Dorothy-bag, or imitationleather dispatch-case, each with a paper novelette, and so to the clearspaces of Clapham Common, now glittering with the lights of home, andholding in its midst a precious jewel--the sparkled windows of theWindmill Inn. 

At home, tea is ready set for them and their brothers. Brothers areprobably in warehouses or offices, somewhere in the brutal City; forevery member of the suburban family earns something; they all contributetheir little bit to help "keep the home going. " Tea is set in thekitchen, or living-room, and Mother sits there by the fire, awaiting thereturn of her brood, and reading, for the forty-fourth time, _EastLynne_. Acacia Grove is a narrow street of small houses, but each houseis pridefully held by its owners, and fierce competition, in the matterof front gardens, is waged during spring and summer. Now it is aregiment of soft lights, each carrying its message of cheer and promisesof tea, armchair, and slippered ease. The fragrance of the meal isalready on the air, and through the darling twilight comes themuffin-man and the cheery tinkle of his bell--one of the last of a oncegreat army of itinerant feeders of London. Gaslight and firelight leapon the spread table, glinting against cups and saucers and spoons, andlighting, with sudden spurts, the outer gloom. A sweet warmth fills theroom--the restful homeliness imparted by a careful, but not too careful, woman. The wallpaper is flaring, but very clean. The pictures areflaring, but framed with honest love. The dresser holds, not onlycrockery but also items of decoration: some carved candlesticks, somephotographs in gilt frames, an ornament with a nodding head, kept therebecause it always amuses young Emmie's baby when she calls. Everywherepride of home is apparent. . . . 

When the lady hears a familiar step, she lays _East Lynne_ aside, pokesup the fire, places a plate in the fender, and a kipper over thegriddle, where it sizzles merrily; for it is wasteful to use the gasgrill when you have a fire going. Then the boys come clumping in, or thegirls come tripping in, and Mother attends them while she listens torecitals of the days doings in the City. Sometimes the youngsters areallowed to postpone their tea until the big ones come home; and thenthey take a Scramble Tea on the rug before the fire. You take a ScrambleTea by turning saucers and plates upside down, and placing the butter inthe sugar-basin, the sugar on the bread-board, and the bread, so far aspossible, in the sugar-basin, and the milk in the slop-basin. Taken inthis way, your food acquires a new and piquant flavour, and stimulates aflagging appetite. Or they lounge against the table, and help themselvesto sly dips in the jam with the handle of a teaspoon, or make predatoryassaults on the sugar-basin. 

After tea, the bright boys wash, clean their boots, and change intotheir "second-best" attire, and stroll forth, either to a picture palaceor to the second house of the Balham Hippodrome; perchance, if the godsbe favourable, to an assignation on South Side Clapham Common; sometimesto saunter, in company with others, up and down that parade until they"click" with one of the "birds. " The girls are out on much the sameprogramme. They, too, promenade until they "click" with some one, andare escorted to picture palace or hall or chocolate shop. Usually, it isa picture palace, for, in Acacia Grove, mothers are very strict as tothe hours at which their young daughters shall be in. Half-past ten isthe general rule, with an extension on certain auspicious occasions. 

It is a great game, this "clicking"; with very nice rules. Howeverseasoned the player may be, there are always, in certain districts, pitfalls for the unwary. The Clapham manner is sharply distinct from theBlackheath manner, as the Kilburn manner is distinct from that ofLeyton. On Clapham Common, the monkeys' parade is South Side; and thegame is started by strolling from "The Plough" to Nightingale Lane. Asthe boys pass the likely girls they glance, and, if not rebuffed, offerwide smiles. But they do not stop. At the second meeting, however, theysmile again and touch hands in passing, or cry over the shoulder somecurrent witticism, as: "'Snice night, Ethel!" or "I should shay sho!"

And Ethel and Lucy will swing round, challengingly, with scraping feet, and cry, "Oooh!" The boys linger at the corner, looking back, and thegirls, too, look back. Ethel asks Lucy, "Shall we?" and Lucy says, "Oooh--I d'no, " and by that time the boys have drawn level with them. They say, "Isn't it cold?" or "Awf'ly warm 'sevening!" And then, "Whereyou off to in such a hurry?"

"Who--me?"

"Yes--you. Saucy!"

"Ooh--I d'no!"

"Well--shall we stroll 'cross the Common?"

"I don' mind. "

Then boys and girls move forward together for the bosky glades of theCommon. They have "clicked. " They have "got off. "

In the light evenings the children sometimes take Mother for a 'bus rideto Kingston or Mitcham, or Uncle George may drop in and talk to themabout the garden. While the elders talk gardens, the kiddies play in thepassage at sliding down the banisters. Having regard to its value insoothing the nerves and stimulating the liver, and to the fact that itis an indoor pastime within the reach of high and low, I neverunderstand why banister-sliding has not become more popular. I shouldimagine that it would be an uproariously successful innovation at anysmart country house, during the long evenings, and the first hostess whohas the courage to introduce it will undoubtedly reap her reward. . . . 

There are, of course, other domesticities around Clapham Common on aslightly higher scale; for there are roads and roads of uniform housesat rents of £60 and £70 per annum, and here, too, sweetness and (pardonthe word) Englishness spread their lambent lustre. 

Here they do not come home to tea; they come home to dinner. Dinner isusually the simple affair that you get at Simpson's: a little soupfollowed by a joint and vegetables, and a sweet of some sort. Beer isusually drunk, though they do rise to wine on occasion. Here, too, theyhave a real dining-room, very small, but still . . . A dining-room. Theykeep a maid, trim and smiling. And after dinner you go into thedrawing-room. The drawing-room is a snug little concern, decorated in acommonplace way, but usually a corner where you can be at ease. Thepictures are mostly of the culture of yesterday--Watts, Rossetti, aWhistler or so; perhaps, courageously, a Monet reproduction. Theoccasional tables bear slim volumes of slim verse, and a novel fromMudie's. There is one of those ubiquitous fumed-oak bookcases. They goin a little for statuettes, of a kind. There is no attempt at heavylavishness, nor is there any attempt at breaking away from tradition. The piano is open. The music on the stand is "Little Grey Home in theWest"; it is smothering Tchaikowsky's "Chant sans Paroles. " There areseveral volumes of music--suspiciously new--Chopin's Nocturnes, Mozart'sSonaten, Schubert's Songs. 

After dinner, the children climb all over you, and upset your coffee, and burn themselves on your cigarette. Then Mother asks therumple-haired baby, eight years old, to recite to the guest, and shedeclines. So Mother goes to the piano, and insists that she shall sing. To this she consents, so long as she may turn her back on her audience. So she stands, her little legs looking so pathetic in socks, by hermother, and sings, very prettily, "Sweet and Low" and that delicatething of Thomas Dekker's--"Golden Slumbers"--with its lovelyseventeenth-century melody, full of the graceful sad-gaiety of pastthings, and of a pathos the more piercing because at first unsuspected;beauty and sorrow crystallized in a few simple chords. 

Then baby goes in care of the maid to bed, and Mother and Father andHelen, who is twelve years old, go to the pictures at the Palladium nearBalham Station. There, for sixpence, they have an entertainment which isquite satisfying to their modest temperaments and one, withal, which isquite suitable to Miss Twelve Years Old; for Father and Mother areProper People, and would not like to take their treasure to the sullyingatmosphere of even a suburban music-hall. 

So they spend a couple of hours with the pictures, listening to anorchestra of a piano, a violin, and a 'cello, which plays evenindifferent music really well. And they roar over the facialextravagances of Ford Sterling and his friends Fatty and Mabel; theyapplaud, and Miss Twelve Years Old secretly admires the airy adventuresof the debonair Max Linder--she thinks he is a dear, only she daren'ttell Mother and Father so, or they would be startled. And then there isMr. C. Chaplin--always there is Mr. C. Chaplin. Personally, I loathe thecinematograph. It is, I think, the most tedious, the most banal form ofentertainment that was ever flung at a foolish public. The Punch andJudy show is sweetness and light by comparison. It is the mechanicalnature of the affair that so depresses me. It may be clever; I have nodoubt it is. But I would rather see the worst music-hall show that wasever put up than the best picture-play that was ever filmed. Thedarkness, the silence, the buzz of the machine, and the insignificantprocessions of shadows on a sheet are about the last thing I should everdescribe by the word Entertainment. I would as soon sit for two hours ina Baptist Chapel. Still, Mr. C. Chaplin has made it endurable. 

After the pictures, they go home, and Miss Twelve goes to bed, whileMother and Father sit up awhile. Father has a nightcap, perhaps, andMother gives him a little music. She doesn't pretend to play, she willtell her guests; she just amuses herself. Often they have a friend ortwo in for dinner and a little music, or music and a little dinner. Orsometimes they visit other friends in an exchange of hospitalities, orbook seats for a theatre, or for the Coliseum, and perhaps dine in townat Gatti's or Maxim's, and feel very gay. Mother seizes the opportunityto air her evening frock, and father dresses, too, and they have a taxito town and a taxi home. 

Then, one by one, the lights in their Avenue disappear; the warm windowsclose their tired eyes; and in the soft silence of the London night theyascend, hand in hand, to their comfortable little bedroom; and it is allvery sweet and sacramental. . . . 

A LONELY NIGHT

KINGSLAND ROAD

_A LONELY NIGHT_

 _In the tinted dayspring of a London alley, Where the dappled moonlight cools the sunburnt lane, Deep in the flare and the coloured noise of suburbs, Long have I sought you in shade and shine and rain! Through dusky byways, rent with dancing naphthas, Through the trafficked highways, where streets and streets collide, Through the evil twilight, the night's ghast silence, Long have I wandered, and wondered where you hide. _

 _Young lip to young lip does another meet you? Has a lonely traveller, when day was stark and long, Toiling ever slower to the grey road's ending, Reached a sudden summer of sun and flower and song? Has he seen in you the world's one yearning, All the season's message, all the heaven's play? Has he read in you the riddle of our living? Have you to another been the dark's one ray?_

 _Well, if one has held you, and, holding you, beheld you Shining down upon him like a single star; If Love to Love leans, even as the June sky, Laughing down to earth, leans strangely close and far; Has he seen the moonlight mirrored in the bloomy, Softly-breathing gloom of your dear dark hair; And seeing it, has worshipped, and cried again for heaven? Then am I joyful for a fire-kissed prayer!_

A LONELY NIGHT

KINGSLAND ROAD

Kingsland Road is one of the few districts of London of which I can say, definitely, that I loathe it. I hate to say this about any part ofLondon, but Kingsland Road is Memories . . . Nothing sentimental, butMemories of hardship, the bitterest of Memories. It is a bleak patch inmy life; even now the sight of its yellow-starred length, as cruellystraight as a sword, sends a shudder of chill foreboding down my back. It is, like Barnsbury, one of the lost places of London, and I have metmany people who do not believe in it. "Oh yes, " they say, "I knew that'buses went there; but I never knew there really was such a place. "

Many miles I have tramped and retramped on its pavements, filled with abrooding bitterness which is no part of seventeen. Those were the daysof my youth, and, looking back, I realize that something, indeed, agreat deal, was missing. Youth, of course, in the abstract, is regardedas a kingship, a time of dreams, potentialities, with new things waitingfor discovery at every corner. Poets talk of it as some kind of magic, something that knows no barriers, that whistles through the world's dullstreets a charmed tune that sets lame limbs pulsing afresh. Nothing ofthe kind. Its only claim is that it is the starting-point. Only once dowe make a friend--our first. Only once do we succeed--and that is whenwe take our first prize at school. All others are but empty echoes oftunes that only once were played. 

There are fatuous folk who, having become successful and lost theirdigestions, look back on their far youth, and talk, saying that theirearly days, despite miseries and hardships, were really, now they regardthem dispassionately, the happiest of their lives. That is a lie. Andeverybody, even he who says it, secretly knows it to be a lie. Youth isnot glorious; it is shamefaced. It is a time of self-searching andself-exacerbation. It is a horrible experience which everybody is gladto forget, and which nobody ever wants to repeat. It knows no zest. Itis a time of spiritual unrest, a chafing of the soul. Youth is cruel, troubled, sensitive to futilities. Only childhood and middle-age can belight-hearted about life: childhood because it doesn't understand, middle-age because it does. 

And a youth of poverty is, literally, hell. There is a canting phrase inEngland to the effect that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of. Yet ifthere is one country in the world where poverty is a thing to besuperlatively ashamed of, that country is England. There never was anEnglishman who wasn't ashamed of being poor. I myself had a youth ofhardship and battle: a youth in which I invaded the delectable countriesof Literature and Music, and lived sometimes ecstatically on a planemany degrees above everyday life, and--was hungry. Now, looking back, when I have, at any rate, enough to live upon and can procure anything Iwant within reason; though I am no longer enthusiastic about Art orMusic or Letters, and have lost the sharp palate I had for these things;yet, looking back, I know that those were utterly miserable days, andthat right now I am having the happiest time of my life. For, though Idon't very much want books and opera and etchings and wines andliqueurs--still, if I want them I can have them at any moment. And thatsense of security is worth more than a thousand of the temperamentalecstasies and agonies that are the appanage of hard-up youth. 

At that time, fired by a small journalistic success, I insulted thesenior partner of the City firm which employed me at a wicked wage, andtook my departure. Things went well, for a time, and then went ill. There were feverish paradings of Fleet Street, when I turned out vividparagraphs for the London Letter of a Northern daily, receiving half acrown apiece. They were wonderful paragraphs. Things seemed to happen inLondon every day unknown to other newspapers; and in the service of thatjournal I was, by the look of it, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, in fiveplaces at once. But that stopped, and for some time I drifted, in a sortof mental and physical stupor, all about highways and byways. I sawnaked life in big chunks. I dined in Elagabalian luxury at Lockhart's ona small ditto and two thick 'uns, and a marine. I took midnight walksunder moons which--pardon the decadent adjectives--were pallid andpassionate. I am sure they were at that time: all moons were. Then, thelightness of my stomach would rise to the head, so that I walked on air, and brilliance played from me like sparks from a cat's back. I couldhave written wonderful stuff then--had I the mind. I wandered andwandered; and that is about all I remember. Bits of it come back to meat times, though. . . . 

I remember, finally, sloughing through Bishopsgate into Norton Folgate, when I was down to fifteen-and-sixpence. In Norton Folgate I found atimid cocoa-room, and, careless of the future, I entered and gorged. Sausages . . . Mashed . . . Bread . . . Tomatoes . . . Pints of hot tea. . . . Too, I found sage wisdom in the counter-boy. He had been through it. We putthe matter into committee, and it was discussed from every possiblepoint of view. I learnt that I could get a room for next to nothinground about there, and that there was nothing like studying the "Sits. Vacant" in the papers at the Library; or, if there was anything like it, it was trusting to your luck. No sense in getting the bleeding pip. Ashe was eighteen and I was seventeen, I took his counsel to heart, and, fired with a repletion of sausage and potato, I stalked lodgings throughthe forests of Kingsland Road and Cambridge Road. In the greasy, strewnhighway, where once the Autonomie Club had its home, I struck CudgettStreet--a narrow, pale cul-de-sac, containing fifty dilapidatedcottages; and in the window of the first a soiled card: "One Room toLet. "

The doorstep, flush with the pavement, was crumbling. The door hadnarrowly escaped annihilation by fire; but the curtains in thefront-room window were nearly white. Two bare-armed ladies, with skirtshiked up most indelicately behind them, were sloshing down theirrespective doorsteps, and each wall was ragged with five or six frayedheads thrust from upper windows for the silken dalliance ofconversation. However, it was sanctuary. It looked cheap. I knocked. 

A lady in frayed alpaca, carrying a house-flannel, came to hearken. "Oh, yerss. Come in. Half a jiff till I finished this bottom stair. Nowthen--whoa!--don't touch that banister; it's a bit loose. Ver narselyfurnished you'll find it is. There. Half-a-crown a week. Dirt cheap, too. Why, Mrs. Over-the-Road charges four for hers. But I can't. I ain'tgot the cheek. "

I tripped over the cocoanut mat. The dulled windows were draped with astrip of gauze. The "narse furnicher" wasn't there. There was a chest ofdrawers whose previous owner had apparently been in the habit oftumbling into bed by candle-light and leaving it to splutter its declineand shed its pale blood where it would. The ceiling was picked out withfly-spots. It smelt--how shall I give it to you? The outgoing tenant hadobviously used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obviously supped nightlyon stout and fish-and-chips. He had obviously smoked the localCavendish. He had obviously had an acute objection to draughts of anykind. The landlady had obviously "done up" the room once a week. . . . Nowperhaps you get that odour. 

But the lady at my side, seeing hesitation, began a kind of pæan on theroom. She sang it in its complete beauty. She dissected it, and made apanegyric on the furniture in comparison with that of Mrs. Over-the-Road. She struck the lyre and awoke a louder and loftier strainon the splendour of its proportions and symmetry--"heaps of room here toswing a cat"--and her rapture and inspiration swelled as she turnedherself to the smattering price charged for it. On this theme shechanted long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, senescent imageriesleaped from the song. 

Of course, I had to take it. And towards late afternoon, when the greycloak of twilight was beginning to be torn by the gas lamps, I hadpulled the whole place to pieces and found out what made it work. I hadstood it on its head. I had reversed it, and armlocked it, and committedall manner of assaults on it. I had found twenty old cigarette endsunder the carpet, and entomological wonders in the woodwork of thewindow. Fired by my example, the good lady came up to help, and when Ireturned from a stroll she had garnished it. Two chairs, on which in myinnocence I sat, were draped with antimacassars. Some portraits of drabpeople, stiffly posing, had been placed on the mantelshelf, and somedusty wool mats, set off with wax flowers, were lighting the chest ofdrawers to sudden beauty. In my then mood the false luxury touched mecuriously. 

There I was and there I stayed in slow, mortifying idleness. _You_ getstranded in Kingsland Road for a fortnight . . . I wish you would. Itwould teach you so many things. For it is a district of cold, muddysqualor that it is ashamed to own itself. It is a place of narrowstreets, dwarfed houses, backed by chimneys that growl their way to thefree sky, and day and night belch forth surly smoke and stink of hops. The poverty of Poplar is abject, and, to that extent, picturesque in itsfrankness; there is no painful note of uncomely misery about it. But thepoverty of Kingsland is the diseased poverty of bead flowers in thefront room and sticky furniture on the hire system. 

My first night was the same as every other. My window looked out on achurch tower which still further preyed on the wan light of the street, and, as I lay in bed, its swart height, pierced by the lit clock face, gloated stiffly over me. From back of beyond a furry voice camedolefully--

 Goo bay to sum-_mer_, goo bay, goo baaaaay!

That song has thrilled and chilled me ever since. Next door an EasyPayments piano was being tortured by wicked fingers that sought afterthe wild grace of Weber's "Invitation to the Valse. " From the street theusual London night sounds floated up until well after midnight. Therewas the dull, pessimistic tramp of the constable, and the long rumble ofthe Southwark-bound omnibus. Sometimes a stray motor-car would hoot andjangle in the distance, swelling to a clatter as it passed, and fallingaway in a pathetic _diminuendo_. A traction-engine grumbled its wayalong, shaking foundations and setting bed and ornaments a-trembling. Then came the blustering excitement of chucking-out at the "GallopingHorses. " Half a dozen wanted to fight; half a dozen others wanted tokiss; everybody wanted to live in amity and be jollyolpal. A woman'svoice cried for her husband, and abused a certain Long Charlie; and LongCharlie demanded with piteous reiteration: "Why don't I wanter fight?Eh? Tell me that. Why don't I wanter fight? Did you 'ear what he calledme? Did you 'ear? He called me a--a--what was it he called me?"

Then came police, disbandment, and dark peace, as the strayed revellersmelted into the night. Sometimes there would sound the faint tinkle of abelated hansom, chiming solitarily, as though weary of frivolity. Andthen a final stillness of which the constable's step seemed but a part. 

It was a period of chill poverty that shamed to recognize itself. I wasmiserably, unutterably lonely. I developed a temper of acid. I lookedon the world, and saw all things bitter and wicked. The passing of arich carriage exasperated me to fury: I understood in those moments thespirit that impels men to throw bombs at millionaires and royalties. Among the furious wilds of Kingsland, Hackney, and Homerton I spent myrage. There seemed to be no escape, no outlet, no future. Sometimes Isat in that forlorn little room; sometimes I went to bed; sometimes Iwandered and made queer acquaintance at street corners; sometimes I evenscanned that tragic column of the _Daily Telegraph_--Situations Vacant. Money went dribbling away. At "Dirty Dick's" you can get a quartern ofport for threepence, and gin is practically given away. Drink is acurse, I know, but there are innumerable times when it has saved a manfrom going under. . . . I wish temperance fiends would recognize this. 

After a time, all effort and anxiety ceased. I became listless. Ineither wondered nor anticipated. I wandered about the Christmasstreets, amid radiant shops. The black slums and passages were littlegorges of flame and warmth, and in Morning Lane, where the stalls roaredwith jollity, I could even snatch some of their spirit and feel, momentarily, one of them. The raucous mile of Cambridge Road I coveredmany times, strolling from lit window to lit window, from ragged smearsof lights to ragged chunks of dark. The multitudes of "Useful Presents, ""Pretty Gifts, " "Remarkable Value, " "Seasonable Offerings" did nottantalize me; they simply were part of another world. I saw things asone from Mars. 

That was a ghastly Christmas. Through the whole afternoon Itramped--from Hackney to Homerton, thence to Clapton, to StokeNewington, to Tottenham, and back. Emptiness was everywhere: no people, little traffic. Roofs and roads were hard with a light frost, and in thesudden twilight the gleaming windows of a hundred houses shone outjeeringly. Sounds of festivity disturbed the brooding quiet of thetown. Each side street was a corridor of warm blinds. Harmoniums, pianos, concertinas, mouth organs, gramophones, tin trumpets, and voicesuncertainly controlled, poured forth their strains, mingling andclashing. The whole thing seemed got up expressly for my disturbance. Inone street I paused, and looked through an unshaded window into a littleinterior. Tea was in progress. Father and Mother were at table, Fatherfeeding the baby with cake dipped in tea, Mother fussily busy with theteapot, while two bigger youngsters, with paper headdresses from thecrackers, were sprawling on the rug, engaged in the exciting sport oftoast-making. It made me sick. A little later the snow unexpectedly camedown, and the moon came out and flung long passages of light over thewhite world, and forced me home to my room. 

Next day, I had no food at all, and in the evening I sprawled on thebed. Then things happened. 

The opposite room on the same landing had been let to a girl who worked, so I understood from my hostess, at the cork factory close at hand. Shecame home every evening at about six, and the little wretch invariablyhad a hot meal with her tea. It was carried up from below. It wascarried past my door. I could not object to this, but I could and didobject to the odour remaining with me. Have you ever smelt Irish stewafter being sixteen hours without food? I say I objected. What I saidwas: "Can't you keep that damn stink out of my room?" Landlady said shewas sorry; didn't know it annoyed me; but you couldn't keep food fromsmelling, could you?

So I slammed the door. A little later came a timid tap. I was stilllying on the bed, picturing for myself an end in the manner of a youthnamed Chatterton, but I slithered off to answer the knock. Before Icould do so, the door was pushed softly open, and Miss Cork Factorypushed a soft head through it. 

"Say, don't mind me, do you? But here, I know all about you. I beenwatching you, and the old girl's told me, too. She given you notice?Listen. I got a good old stew going in here. More'n enough for two. Comeon!"

What would you have done? I was seventeen; and she, I imagine, was abouttwenty. But a girl of twenty is three times older than a boy ofseventeen. She commanded. She mothered. I felt infinitely childlike andabsurd. I thought of refusing; but that seemed an idiotic attempt atdignity which would only amuse this very mature young person. To acceptseemed to throw away entirely one's masculinity. Somehow, I. . . . But shestepped right into the room then, instinctively patting her hair andsmoothing herself, and she took me by the arm. 

"Look here, now. Don't you go on this silly way; else you'll be a casefor the morchery. Noner your nonsense, now. You come right along in. "She flitted back, pulling me with her, to the lit doorway of her room, ayellow oblong of warmth and fragrance. "Niff it?" she jerked in allusionto the stew. I nodded; and then I was inside and the door shut. 

She chucked me into a rickety chair by the dancing fire, and chatteredcheerily while she played hostess, and I sat pale and tried to recoverdignity in sulky silence. 

She played for a moment or so over a large vegetable dish which stood inthe fender, and then uprose, with flaming face and straying hair, andset a large plate of real hot stuff before me on the small table. "_There_ you are, me old University chum!" served as her invitation tothe feast. She shot knife, fork, and spoon across the table with a neatshove-ha'p'ny stroke. Bread followed with the same polite service, andthen she settled herself, squarely but very prettily, before her ownplate, mocking me with twinkling eyes over her raised spoon. 

Her grace was terse but adequate: "Well--here's may God help us as wedeserve!" I dipped my spoon, lifted it with shaking hand, my heartbursting to tell the little dear girl what I thought about her, my lipsrefusing to do anything of the sort; refusing, indeed, to do anything atall; for having got the spoon that far, I tried to swallow the goodstuff that was in it, and--well . . . I . . . I burst into tears. Yes, Idid. 

"What the devil----" she jerked. "Now what the devil's the matterwith---- Oh, I know. I see. "

"I can't help it, " I hiccuped. "It's the st-st-st-stew! It's sogoo-goo-good!"

"There, that's all right, kid. I know. I been like that. You have astretch of rotten luck, and you don't get nothing for perhaps a day, andyou feel fit to faint, and then at last you get it, and when you got it, can't touch it. Feel all choky, like, don't you? I know. You'll be allright in a minute. Get some more into you!"

I did. And I was all right. I sat by her fire for the rest of theevening, and smoked her cigarettes--twelve for a penny. And we talked;rather good talk, I fancy. As the food warmed me, so I came out of myshell. And gradually the superior motherliness of my hostessdisappeared; I was no longer abject under her gaze; I no longer feltlike a sheepish schoolboy. I saw her as what she really was--a pale, rather fragile, very girlish girl. We talked torrentially. We broke intoone another's sentences without apology. We talked simultaneously. Wehurled autobiography at each other. . . . 

That was my last week in Kingsland Road; for luck turned, and I foundwork--of a sort. I left on the Saturday. I parted from her at CudgettStreet corner. I never asked her name; she never asked mine. She justshook hands, and remarked, airily, "Well, so long, kid. Good luck. "

A MUSICAL NIGHT

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES

_AT THE PIANO_

 _Cane chairs, a sleek piano, table and bed in a room Lifted happily high from the loud street's fermentation; Tobacco and chime of voices wreathing out of the gloom, Out of the lilied dusk at the firelight's invitation. Then, in the muffled hour, one, strange and gracious and sad, Moves from the phantom hearth, and, with infinite delicacies, Looses his lissome hands along the murmurous keys. _

 _Valse, mazurka, and nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, The radiant hands light up the enchanted gloom With the pure flame of life from the shadowless tomb. _

A MUSICAL NIGHT

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES

For a few months of the year London is the richest of all cities in thematter of music; but it is only for a few months. From the end of Augustto the end of October we have Sir Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts. Fromthe end of May to mid-July we have the Grand Season at Covent Garden. Interspersed between these, at intervals all too rare, we haveindividual concerts at the Queen's, Steinway, and Æolian Halls;sometimes an Autumn Season of opera or Russian ballet; and the Saturdayand Sunday concerts, the former at the Albert and Queen's Halls, and thelatter, under the auspices of the Sunday League, at pretty well everytheatre and music-hall in London and the suburbs. 

There are, however, long spells of emptiness when nothing or little isdoing in musical London, and that little hardly ever at night, thoughSir Thomas Beecham, the greatest philanthropist of his time, is doingsplendid work in feeding the hungry music-lover. 

I should like, just here, to enter a protest against the practiceprevalent among our best soloists of giving their concerts in theafternoons. Does it not occur to MM. Pachmann, Paderewski, Backhaus, Mischa Elman, Hambourg, and others that there are thousands ofmusic-lovers in London who are never free at afternoons, and cannot turntheir little world upside down in order to snatch an afternoon even forsomething so compelling as their recitals? Continually London gives youthese empty evenings. You do not want theatre or vaudeville; you wantmusic. And it is not to be had at any price; though when it is to be hadit is very well worth having. 

No artist of any kind in music--singer, pianist, violinist, conductor--considers himself as established until he has appeared inLondon and received its award of merit; and whatever good things may begoing in other continental cities we know that, with the least possiblewaste of time, those good things will be submitted to us for our sealingjudgment. There is only one other city in the world which has so firm agrip on the music of the hour, and that is Buenos Ayres. 

Let the superior persons, like Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who says thatLondon is not musical, because it sniffs at Schonberg, and doesn't getexcited over the dead meat of Rossini, Auber, and Bellini, pay a visitany night to Queen's Hall during the Promenade Season. Where are theempty seats? In the five-shilling tier. Where is the hall packed tosuffocation? In the shilling promenade. In the promenade there are seatsfor about one hundred, and room for about seven hundred. That means thatsix hundred Londoners stand, close-packed, with hardly room for a changeof posture and in an atmosphere overcharged with heat and sound, for twohours and a half, listening, not to the inanities of Sullivan orOffenbach or Arditi, but to Weber, Palestrina, Debussy, Tchaikowsky, Wieniawski, Chopin, Mozart, Handel, and even the starch-stiff Bach. 

Personally I prefer the sugar and spice of Italian Opera. I know it isan execrable taste, but as I am a most commonplace person I cannot helpmyself. I have loved it since childhood, when the dull pages of myViolin Tutor were lit by crystalline fragments of Cherubini andDonizetti, and when the house in which I lived was chattering day andnight Italianate melody. One of my earliest recollections is of hearing, as a tiny thing in petticoats, the tedious noises of the professionalmusician, and the E A D G of the fiddle was the accompaniment to all mygames. From noon until seven in the evening I played amid the squeak ofthe fiddle, the chant of the 'cello, the solemn throb of the doublebass, and the querulous wail of flute and piccolo; and always the musicwas the music of Italy, for these elders worked in operatic orchestras. So I learned to love it, and especially do I still love themoderns--Leoncavallo, Wolf-Ferrari, Mascagni, Puccini--for it was in "LaBohème" that I heard both Caruso and grand opera for the first time; andwhenever I now hear "Che gelida manina, " even badly sung, I always wantto sit down and have a good cry. It reminds me of a pale office-boy offifteen, who had to hoard his pence for a fortnight and wait weary hoursat the gallery door of Covent Garden to hear Caruso, Scotti, Melba, andJournet as the Bohemians. What nights! I remember very clearly thatfirst visit. I had heard other singers, English singers, the best ofwhom are seldom better than the third-rate Italians, but Caruso. . . . Whatis he? He is not a singer. He is not a voice. He is a miracle. Therewill not be another Caruso for two or three hundred years; perhaps notthen. We had been so accustomed to the spurious, manufactured voices ofpeople like de Reszke and Tamagno and Maurel, that when the genuinearticle was placed before us we hardly recognized it. Here was somethinglovelier than anything that had yet been heard; yet we must needs stopto carp because it was not quite proper. All traditions were smashed, all laws violated, all rules ignored. Jean de Reszke would strain andstrain, until his audience suffered with him, in order to produce aneffect which this new singer of the South achieved with his hands in hispockets, as he strolled round the stage. 

The Opera in London is really more of a pageant than a musical function. The front of the house frequently claims more attention than the stage. On Caruso and Melba nights it blazes. Tiers and tiers of boxes raceround in a semicircle. If you are early, you see them as black gapingmouths. But very soon they are filled. The stalls begin to leap withlight, for everybody who is not anybody, but would like to be somebody, drags out everything she possesses in the way of personal adornment, and sticks it on her person, so that all the world may wonder. At eachbox is a bunch of lights, and, with the arrival of the silks andjewellery, they are whipped to a thousand scintillations. 

The blaze of dancing light becomes painful; the house, especiallyupstairs, is spitefully hot. Then the orchestra begin to tumble in;their gracefully gleaming lights are adjusted, and the monotonous Asurges over the house--the fiddles whine it, the golden horns softlyblare it, and the wood-wind plays with it. 

But now there is a stir, a sudden outburst of clapping. Campanini is up. Slowly the lights dissolve into themselves. There is a subdued rustle aswe settle ourselves. A few peremptory _Sh-sh-sh!_ from the ardentgalleryites. 

Campanini taps. His baton rises . . . And suddenly the band mumbles thosefew swift bars that send the curtain rushing up on the garret scene. Only a few bars . . . Yet so marvellous is Puccini's feeling foratmosphere that with them he has given us all the bleak squalor of hisstory. You feel a chill at your heart as you hear them, and before thecurtain rises you know that it must rise on something miserable andoutcast. The stage is in semi-darkness. The garret is low-pitched, witha sloping roof ending abruptly in a window looking over Paris. There isa stove, a table, two chairs, and a bed. Nothing more. Two people areon. One stands at the window, looking, with a light air of challenge, atParis. Down stage, almost on the footlights, is an easel, at which anartist sits. The artist is Scotti, the baritone, as Marcello. Theorchestra shudders with a few chords. The man at the window turns. He isa dumpy little man in black wearing a golden wig. What a figure it is!What a make-up! What a tousled-haired, down-at-heel, out-at-elbowsClerkenwell exile! The yellow wig, the white-out moustache, the brokencollar. . . . But a few more brusque bars are tossed from Campanini'sbaton, and the funny little man throws off, cursorily, over hisshoulder, a short passage explaining how cold he is. The house thrills. That short passage, throbbing with tears and laughter, has rushed, likea stream of molten gold, to the utmost reaches of the auditorium, andnot an ear that has not jumped for joy of it. For he is Rudolfo, thepoet; in private life, Enrico Caruso, Knight of the Order of SanGiovanni, Member of the Victorian Order, Cavalier of the Order of SantaMaria, and many other things. 

As the opera proceeds, so does the marvel grow. You think he can havenothing more to give than he has just given; the next moment he deceivesyou. Towards the end of the first Act, Melba enters. You hear her voice, fragile and firm as fluted china, before she enters. Then comes thewonderful love-duet--"Che gelida manina" for Caruso and "Mi chiamanoMimi" for Melba. Gold swathed in velvet is his voice. Like all truegeniuses, he is prodigal of his powers; he flings his lyrical fury overthe house. He gives all, yet somehow conveys that thrilling suggestionof great things in reserve. Again and again he recaptures his first finecareless rapture. His voice dances forth like a little girl on a sunlitroad, wayward, captivating, never fatigued, leaping where othersstumble, tripping many miles, with fresh laughter and bright quickblood. There never were such warmth and profusion and display. Not onlyis it a voice of incomparable magnificence: it has that intangiblequality that smites you with its own mood: just the something that marksthe difference between an artist and a genius. There are those who sniffat him. "No artist, " they say; "look what he sings. " They would like himbetter if he were not popular; if he concerned himself, not with Pucciniand Leoncavallo, but with those pretentiously subtle triflers, Debussyand his followers. Some people can never accept beauty unless it beremote. But true beauty is never remote. The art which demandstranscendentalism for its appreciation stamps itself at once asinferior. True art, like love, asks nothing, and gives everything. Thesimplest people can understand and enjoy Puccini and Caruso and Melba, because the simplest people are artists. And clearly, if beauty cannotspeak to us in our own language, and still retain its dignity, it is notbeauty at all. 

Caruso speaks to us of the little things we know, but he speaks with alyric ecstasy. Ecstasy is a horrible word; it sounds like something todo with algebra; but it is the one word for this voice. The passion ofhim has at times almost frightened me. I remember hearing him at thefirst performance of "Madame Butterfly, " and he hurt us. He worked upthe love-duet with Butterfly at the close of the first act in suchfashion that our hands were wrung, we were perspiring, and I at leastwas near to fainting. Such fury, such volume of liquid sound could notgo on, we felt. But it did. He carried a terrific crescendo passage aslightly as a school-girl singing a lullaby, and ended on a tremendousnote which he sustained for sixty seconds. As the curtain fell wedropped back in our seats, limp, dishevelled, and pale. It was we whowere exhausted. Caruso trotted on, bright, alert, smiling, and not theslightest trace of fatigue did he show. 

It seems to have been a superb stroke of fortune for us that Carusoshould have come along contemporaneously with Puccini. Puccini has neverdefinitely written an opera for his friend; yet, to hear him sing them, you might think that every one had been specially made for him alone. Their temperaments are marvellously matched. Each is Italian andSouthern to the bone. Whatever Caruso may be singing, whether it beMozart or Gounod or Massenet or Weber, he is really singing Italy. Whatever setting Puccini may take for his operas, be it Japan, or Paris, or the American West, his music is never anything but Italian. 

And I would not have it otherwise. It may offend some artisticconsciences that Butterfly, the Japanese courtesan, should sob out herlament in music which is purely Italian in character and colour; butwhat a piece of melody it is!

Puccini's is a still small voice; very pleading, very conscious ofitself and of the pathos of our little span of living; but thewistfulness of its appeal is almost heartbreaking. He can never, Isuppose, stand among the great composers; dwarfed he must always beagainst Mozart or Weber, or even Verdi. But he has done what all wisemen must do: he has discovered the one thing he can perform well, and heis performing it very well indeed. His genius is slim and miniature, buthe handles it as an artist. There is no man living who can achieve sucheffects with so slender material. There is no man living who can so giveyou, in a few bars, the soul of the little street-girl; no man livingwho can so give you flavour of a mood, or make you smell so sharply theatmosphere of a public street, a garret, a ballroom, or a prairie. Andhe always succeeds because he is always sincere. A bigger man might puthis tongue in his cheek and sit down to produce something like "LaBohème, " and fail miserably, simply because he didn't mean it. 

When Puccini has something to say, though it may be nothing profound orilluminating, he says it; and he can say the trite thing more freshly, with more delicacy, and in more haunting tones, than any other musician. His vocabulary is as marvellous as his facility in orchestration and inthe development of a theme. He gets himself into tangles from whichthere seems no possible escape, only to extricate himself with theairiest of touches. Never does his fertility of melodic invention failhim. He is as prodigal in this respect as Caruso in his moments. Whereothers achieve a beautiful phrase, and rest on it, Puccini never idles;he has others and others, and he crowds them upon you until the ear issurfeited with sweetness, and you can but sit and marvel. 

There it is. Sniff at it as you will, it is a great art that capturesyou against your reason, and when Puccini and Caruso join forces, theycan shake the soul out of the most rabid of musical purists. What theydo to commonplace people like myself is untellable. I have tried to hintat it in these few remarks, but really I have told you nothing . . . Nothing. 

 * * * * *

I am not over-fond of the Promenade Concerts. You have, of course, everything of the best--the finest music of the world, the finestEnglish orchestra, and a neat little concert-hall; but somehow there isthat about it that suggests Education. I have a feeling that Sir Henryis taking me by the hand, training me up in the way I should, musically, go. And I hate being trained. I don't want things explained to me. Theprogramme looks rather like "Music without Tears" or "First Steps forthe Little Ones. " I know perfectly well what Wagner meant by the"Tannhäuser" overture, and what Beethoven wants to say to me in theNinth Symphony. I don't want these things pointed out to me, andsandwiched between information as to when the composer was born, howlong he lived, and how many hundred works he wrote. However, all thatapart, the Promenades are an institution which we should cherish. For ashilling you can lean against the wall of the area, and smoke, and takeyour fill of the best in music. If there is anything that doesn'tinterest you, you can visit the bar until it is concluded. The audienceon the Promenade is as interesting as the programme. All types are to befound here--the serious and hard-up student, the musically inclinedworking-man, probably a member of some musical society in his suburb, the young clerk, the middle-aged man, and a few people who KNOW. 

The orchestra is well set, and its pendant crimson lamps and fernerymake a solemn picture in the soft light. The vocalists and soloists arenot, usually, of outstanding merit, but they sing and play agreeably, and, even if they attempt more than their powers justify them in doing, they never distress you. Sir Henry Wood's entrance on the opening nightof any season is an impressive affair. As each known member of theorchestra comes in, he receives an ovation; but ovation is a poordescriptive for Sir Henry's reception. There is no doubt that he hasdone more for music in England than any other man, and his audiencesknow this; they regard him almost as a friend. 

He is an artist in the matter of programmes. He builds them as a chefbuilds up an elaborate banquet, by the blending of many flavours andessences, each item a subtle, unmarked progression on its predecessor. He is very fond of his Russians, and his readings of Tchaikowsky seem tome the most beautiful work he does. I do not love Tchaikowsky, but hedraws me by, I suppose, the attraction of repulsion. The muse who guidesthe dreamings of the Russian artist is a sombre and heavy-lidded lady, but most sombre, I think, when she moves in the brain of the musician. Then she wears the glooms and sables of the hypochondriac. She does not"nerve us with incessant affirmations. " Rather, she enervates us withincessant dubitations. It is more than a relief to leave the crowdedPromenade, after a Tchaikowsky symphony, to stroll in the dusky glitterof Langham Place, and return to listen the clear, cool tones of Mozart, as sparkling and as gracious as a May morning! Next to Tchaikowsky, SirHenry gives us much of Wagner and Beethoven and Mendelssohn. I can neverunderstand why Mendelssohn is played nowadays. His music always seems tome to be so provincial and gentlemanly and underbred as to remind one ofa county ball. I am sure he always composed in a frock-coat, silk hat, and lavender gloves. When he is being played, many of us have to rushaway and saunter in the foyer. 

Usually the programme contains some examples of modern French music (adelicate horror by Ravel, perhaps) and of the early Italians. You willget something sweet and suave and restful by Palestrina or Handel, andconclude, perhaps, with a tempest of Berlioz. 

During the season of the Promenades, there are also excellent concertsgoing on in the lost districts of London. There is, to begin with, theGrand Opera season at the Old Vic. In Waterloo Road, where you can get abox for one-and-sixpence, and a seat in the gallery for twopence. Theorchestra is good, and the singers are satisfactory. The operas include"Daughter of the Regiment, " and run through Verdi and some of Wagner toMascagni and Charpentier. The audience is mostly drawn from thesurrounding streets, the New Cut and Lower Marsh. It wears its workingclothes, and it smokes cut Cavendish; but there is not a whisper fromthe first bar of the overture to the curtain. The chorus is drawn fromthe local clubs, and a very live and intelligent chorus it is. Thenthere are the Saturday evening concerts at the People's Palace inWhitechapel, at the Surrey Masonic Hall, in Camberwell, at CambridgeHouse, and at Vincent Square. In each case the programme is distinctlyclassical. It is only popular in the sense that the prices are small andthe performers' services are honorary. Many a time have I attended oneof these concerts, because I knew I should hear there some old, butobscure, classic that I should never be likely to hear at any of theWest End concert-halls. 

These West End halls are unhappily situated. The dismal Bond Streetholds one, another stands cheek by jowl with Marlborough Police Court, and the other two are stuck deep in the melancholic greyness of WigmoreStreet. All are absurdly inaccessible. However, when it is a case ofPaderewski or Hambourg or Backhaus or Ysayt, people will makepilgrimages to the end of the earth . . . Or to Wigmore Street. It was atthe Bechstein, on a stifling June evening, that I first heard thatmischievous angel, Vladimir de Pachmann. 

We had dined solidly, with old English ale, at "The Cock, " in FleetStreet. Perhaps tomato soup, mutton cutlets, quarts of bitter, appleand blackberry tart and cream, macaroni cheese, coffee, and kümmel arehardly in the right key for an evening with Chopin. But I am not one ofthose who take their pleasures sadly. If I am to appreciate delicateart, I must be physically well prepared. It may be picturesque to sitthrough a Bayreuth Festival on three dates and a nut, but monkey-tricksof that kind are really a slight on one's host. However, I felt veryfat, physically, and very Maeterlinckian, spiritually, as we clamberedinto a cab and swung up the great bleak space of Kingsway. 

At the entrance to the Steinway we ran against a bunch of critics, andadjourned to the little place at the opposite corner, so that one of thecritics might learn from us what he ought to say about the concert. Wehad just time to slip into our seats, and then Pachmann, sleek andbullet-headed, minced on to the platform. I said that I felt fat, physically, and Maeterlinckian or Burne-Jonesy, or anything else thatsuggests the twilight mood, spiritually. But the moment Pachmann came onhe drove the mood clean out of us. Obviously, _he_ wasn't feelingMaeterlinckian or Chopinesque. He was feeling very full of Pachmann, onecould see. Nothing die-away or poetic about him. He was fat physically, and he looked fat spiritually. One conceived him much more readilynodding over the fire with the old port, than playing Chopin in a bleakconcert-hall, laden with solemn purples and drabs, stark and ungarnishedsave for a few cold flowers and ferns. 

However, there he was; and after he had played games and cracked jokes, of which nobody knew the secrets but himself, with the piano-stool, hishair, and his handkerchief, he set to work. He flourished a few scales;looked up; giggled; said something to the front row; looked off andnodded; rubbed his fingers; gently patted his ashen cheek; thenstretched both hands to the keys. 

He played first a group of Preludes. What is there to say about him?Nothing. Surely never, since Chopin went from us, has Chopin been soplayed. The memory of my Fleet Street dinner vanished. The hallvanished. All surroundings vanished. Vladimir, the antic, took us by thehand and led us forth into a new country: a country like nothing that wehave seen or dreamed of, and therefore a country of which not thevaguest image can be created. It was a country, or, perhaps, a street ofpale shadows . . . And that is all I know. Its name is Pachmann-land. 

Before he was through the first short prelude, he had us in his snare. One by one the details of the room faded, and nothing was left but acloud of lilac in which were Pachmann and the sleek, gleaming piano. Ashe played, change succeeded change. The piano was labelled Chappell, butit might just as well have been labelled Bill Bailey. Under Pachmann, the wooden structure took life, as it were, and became a living thing, breathing, murmuring, clamouring, shrieking. Soon there was neitherChappell, nor Pachmann, nor Chopin; only a black creature--Piano. Oneshivered, and felt curiously afraid. 

Then, suddenly, there was a crash of chords--and silence. That crash hadshattered everything, and, looking up, we saw nothing but the grinningPachmann. One half-remembered that he had been grinning and gesturingand grimacing with ape-like imbecility all the time, yet, somehow, onehad not noticed it. He bobbed up and down, and grinned, and applaudedhimself. But there was something uncanny, mysterious. We looked at oneanother uneasily, afraid to exchange glances. Nobody spoke. Nobodywanted to speak. A few smiled shy, secret smiles, half-afraid ofthemselves. For some moments nobody even applauded. Something had beenwith us. Something strange and sad and exquisitely fragile had gone fromus. 

Pachmann looked at us, noted our dumb wonder, and--giggled like anidiot. 

A JEWISH NIGHT

WHITECHAPEL

_LONDON ROSES_

 _When the young year woos all the world to flower With gold and silver of sun and shower, The girls troop out with an elfin clamour, Delicate bundles of lace and light. And London is laughter and youth and playtime, Fair as the million-blossomed may-time: All her ways are afire with glamour, With dainty damosels pink and white. _

 _The weariest streets new joys discover; The sweet glad girl and the lyric lover Sing their hearts to the moment's flying, Never a thought to time or tears. O frivolous frocks! O fragrant faces, Scattering blooms in the gloomy places! Shatter and scatter our sombre sighing, And lead us back to the golden years!_

A JEWISH NIGHT

WHITECHAPEL

Whitechapel exists under false pretences. It has no right to its name, for the word Whitechapel arouses grim fears in the minds of those whoknow it not. Its reputation is as theatrically artificial as that of theNew York Bowery. Its poverty and its tradition of lawlessness aresedulously fostered by itself for the benefit of the simple-mindedslummer. 

To-day it is, next to St. John's Wood, the most drably respectablequarter of the town. This is explained by the fact that it is theGhetto: the home of the severely moral Jew. There is no disorder inWhitechapel. There is no pillage or rapine or bashing. The colony leadsits own pleasant life, among its own people, interfering with none anddesiring intercourse with none. It has its own manners and customs andits own simple and very beautiful ceremonies. The Jews in London aremuch scattered. They live in various quarters, according to the land oftheir birth. Thus, the French Jews are in Soho, the German Jews in GreatCharlotte Street, the Italian Jews in Clerkenwell, while those ofWhitechapel are either Russian Jews or Jews who have, for threegenerations, been settled in London. The wealthy Jew, who fancieshimself socially, the fat, immoral stockbroker and the City philanderer, has deserted the surroundings of his humbler compatriots for therefinements of Highbury, Maida Vale, and Bayswater. 

The Whitechapel Ghetto begins at Aldgate, branches off at that pointwhere Commercial Street curls its nasty length to Shoreditch, andembraces the greater part of Commercial Road East, sprawling on eitherside. Here at every turn you will meet the Jew of the comic papers. Youwill see expressive fingers, much jewelled, flying in unison with therich Yiddish tongue. You will see beards and silk hats which are surelythose which decorated the Hebrew in Eugène Sue's romance. And you willfind a spirit of brotherhood keener than any other race in the world canshow. It is something akin to the force that inspired that splendidfraternity that once existed in London, and is now no more: I mean theCosters. If a Jew is in trouble or in any kind of distress, a mostbeautiful thing happens: his friends rally round him. 

The atmosphere of the Ghetto is a singular mixture. It is half-ironicgaiety and half-melancholy. But it has not the depressing sadness of theRussian Quarter. Its temper is more akin to that of the Irish colonythat has settled around Southwark and Bermondsey. There is sadness, butno misery. There is gloom, but no despair. There is hilarity, but nofrivolity. There is a note of delight, with sombre undertones. There isnothing of the rapture of living, but rather the pride of accepteddestiny. In the hotels and cafés this is most marked. At the AldgateHotel, you may sit in the brasserie and listen to the Russian Triodiscoursing wistful music, while the packed tables reek with smoke andYiddish talk; but there is a companionable, almost domestic touch aboutthe place which is so lacking about the Western lounges. Young Isaacs isthere, flashing with diamonds and hair-oil, and Rebecca is with him, andthe large, admiring parents of both of them sit with them and drink beeror eat sandwiches. And Isaacs makes love to his Rebecca in full sight ofall. They lounge in their chairs, arms enclasped, sometimes kissing, sometimes patting one another. And the parents look on, and roll theircurly heads and say, with subtle significance, "Oi-oi-oi!" many times. 

Out in the street there is the same homely, yearning atmosphere. It isthe homeliness of a people without a home, without a country. They areexiles who have flung together, as well as may be, the few remnants oftheir possessions, adding to them little touches that may re-create thecolour of their land, and have settled down to make the best of things. Their feasts and festivals are full of this yearning. The Feast ofMaccabeus, which is celebrated near our Christmas-time, is delightfullydomestic. It is preceded, eight days before, by the Feast of the Lights. In each house a candle is lit--one candle on the first day, two on thesecond, three on the third, and so on until the eighth day, which isthat dedicated to Maccabeus. Then there are feastings, and throughoutthe rich evenings the boys walk with the girls or salute the latter asthey lounge at the corners with that suggestion in their faces of lazystrength and smouldering fire. A children's service is held in thesynagogues, and cakes and sweets are distributed. The dark, vivid beautyof these children shows marvellously against the greys of Whitechapel. Every Saturday of the year the streets are filled with them, for thenall shops are shut, all work suspended, and the little ones are in thosebest frocks and velvet suits in which even the poorest parents are soproud to clothe their offspring. They love colour; and ribbons of manyhues are lavished on the frocks and tunics. One of my London moments waswhen I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little Jewess, withmasses of jet-black hair, dressed in vermilion and white. I wonder, bythe way, why it is that the children of the genteel quarters of London, such as Kensington Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only skimpylittle twigs of it, while the children of the East are loaded with curlsand tresses of an almost tropical luxuriance, and are many times morebeautiful. Does that terrifying process called Good Breeding kill allbeauty? Does careful feeding and tending poison the roots of loveliness?I wonder. . . . Anyway, the Jews, beautiful alike in face and richness oftresses, stand to the front in two of the greatest callings of theworld--art and fighting. Examine the heroes of the prize-ring; at leasttwo-thirds of them are Jews. Examine the world's greatest musicians andsingers, and the same may be said. 

On Sundays, of course, only the rags of everyday are seen, for then thework of the week begins again. At about the time of our Easter the Feastof the Passover is celebrated. Then, if you walk down Middlesex Streetany Sunday morning you will notice an activity even more feverish thanthat which it mostly presents. Jews of every nationality flock to it;and for the week preceding this Feast the stall-holders do tremendousbusiness, not, as is customary, with the Gentiles, but among their ownpeople. The Feast of the Passover is one of the oldest and quaintestreligious ceremonies of the oldest religion in the world. Fasting andfeasting intermingle with observances. Spring-cleaning is general atthis season, for all things must be _kosher-al-pesach_, or clean andpure. At the cafés you will find a special kosher bar, whereon are winesand spirits in brand new decanters, glasses freshly bought and cleansed, and a virgin cloth surmounting the whole. The domestic and hardwareshops are busy, for the home must be replenished with chastevessels--pots and pans and all utensils are bought with recklessdisregard of expense. Milk may not be bought from the milkman's cans. Each house fetches its own from the shops, in new, clean jugs, whichare, of course, _kosher_; and nothing is eaten but unleavened bread. 

When the fast is over, begins the feast, and the cafés and the familydining-rooms are full. Down a side street stand straggling armies ofragged, unkempt Jews--men, women, and children. These are thedestitutes. For them the season brings no rejoicing. Therefore theircompatriots come forward, and at the office of the Jewish Board ofGuardians they assemble to distribute supplies of grocery, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, and so forth. Country or sex matters not; all Jewsmust rejoice, and, when necessary, must be supplied with the means ofrejoicing. So here are gathered all the wandering Jews withoutsubstance. Later, after the fine feed which is provided for them, thereare services in the synagogue. The men and women, in strict isolation, are a drama in themselves. Men with long beards and sad, shifty faces;men with grey beards, keen eyes, and intellectual profile; men withcurly hair and Italian features; and women with dark, shining hair andflashing eyes--men, women, and children of every country and clime, richand poor, are gathered there to worship after the forms of the saddestof all faiths. 

The Ghetto is full of life every evening, for then the workshops andfactories and warehouses are closed, and the handsome youth ofWhitechapel is free to amuse itself. Most of the girls work at themillinery establishments, and most of the boys at the wholesale draperyhouses. The High Street is one of the most picturesque main streets ofLondon. The little low butchers' shops, fronted by raucous stalls, thegabled houses, and the flat-faced hotels, are some of the loveliest bitsof eighteenth-century domestic architecture remaining in London. And thecrowd! It sweeps you from your feet; it catches you up, drags you, dropsyou, jostles you; and you don't mind in the least. They are all so gay, and they look upon you with such haunting glances that it is impossibleto be cross with them. If you leave the London Docks, and crawl up thedismal serenity of Cable Street, the High Street seems to snatch you. You catch the mood of the moment; you dance with the hour. There isnoise and the flare of naphtha. There are opulent glooms. The regimentof lame stalls is packed so closely, shoulder to shoulder, that if onegave an inch the whole line would fall. Meat, greengrocery, Brummagemjewellery for the rich beauty of Rhoda, shell-fish, confectionery, oldmagazines, pirated music, haberdashery, "throw-out" (or Sudden Death)cigars--all these glories are waiting to seize your pennies. Slipperyslices of fish sprawl dolefully on the slabs. The complexion of themeat-shops, under the yellow light, is rich and strange. But there isvery little shouting; the shopkeepers make no attempt to entice you. There are the goods: have 'em if you like; if not, leave 'em. 

If you are hungry, and really want something to eat, I suggest yourgoing to one of the restaurants or hotels, and trying their tabled'hôte. They run usually to six or seven courses, two of which willsatisfy any reasonable hunger. Yet I have seen frail young girls tacklethe complete menu, and come up fresh and smiling at the end. Of course, women are, as a rule, much heavier eaters than men, but these delicate, pallid girls of the Ghetto set you marvelling. I have occasionallyjoined a party, and delightful table companions they were. For they cantalk; they have, if not humour, at any rate a very mordant wit, as allmelancholy peoples have; and they languish in the most delicatelycaptivating way. 

On my first experience, we started the meal with Solomon Grundy--pickledherring. Then followed a thick soup, in which were little threads of apaste made from eggs and flour and little balls of unleavened dough. Then came a kind of pea-soup, and here a little lady of the partyordered unfermented Muscat wine. The good Jew may not touch shell-fishor any fish without scales, so we were next served with fried soles andfried plaice, of which Rachel took both, following, apparently, thecustom of the country. Although the menu consists of seven courses, eachitem contains two, and sometimes three or four, dishes; and the correctdiner tastes every one. Roast veal, served in the form of stew, followed, and then came roast fowl and tongue. There were also salads, and sauerkraut, and then a pease-pudding, and then almond-pudding, andthen staffen, and then . . . I loosened a button, and gazed upon Rachel inwonder. She was still eating bread. 

It is well to be careful, before visiting any of the Ghetto cafés, toacquaint yourself with rules and ceremonies. Otherwise you mayunintentionally give offence and make yourself several kinds of idiot. Ihave never at any period of my London life been favoured with a guidinghand. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I was alone. That is really theonly way to see things, and certainly the only way to learn things. If Iwanted to penetrate the inmost mysteries of Hoxton, I went to Hoxton, and blundered into private places and to any holy of holies that lookedinteresting. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes I got what I askedfor. When at seventeen I wanted to find out if the Empire Promenade wasreally anything like the Empire Promenade, I went to the EmpirePromenade. Of course, I made mistakes and muddled through. I mademistakes in the Ghetto. I was the bright boy who went to a shabby littlecafé in Osborn Street, and asked for smoked beef, roll and butter, andcoffee. The expression on that waiter's face haunts me whenever I feelbad and small. He did not order me out of the restaurant. He did notassault me. He looked at me, and I grieved to see his dear grey eyes . . . So sad. He said: "Pardon, but this is a kosher café. I am not a Jewmyself, but how can I serve what you order? Tell me--how can I do it?What?"

I said: "I beg your pardon, too. I don't understand. Tell me more. "

He said: "Would you marry your aunt? No. Neither may a Jewish restaurantserve milk, or its derivatives, such as, so to speak, butter, cheese, and so forth, on the same table with flesh. You ask for meat and breadand butter. You must have bread with your meat. If you have coffee, sir, you will have it BLACK. "

I said: "It is my fault. No offence intended. I didn't know. Once again, I have made an ass of myself. Had I better not go?"

He said, swiftly: "No, don't go, sir. Oh, don't go. Listen: have thesmoked beef, with a roll. Follow with prunes or kugel. And if you want adrink _with_ your meal, instead of afterwards, have tea-and-lemon inplace of black coffee. "

And so, out of that brutal mistake, I made yet another London friend, ofwhom I have, roughly, about two thousand five hundred scattered over thefour-mile radius. 

A HAPPY NIGHT

SURBITON AND BATTERSEA

_A SUBURBAN NIGHT_

 _Oh, sweetly sad and sadly sweet, That rain-pearled night at Highbury! The picture-theatre, off the street, That housed us from the lisping sleet, Is a white grave of dreams for me. _

 _Though smile and talk were all our part, Sorrow lay prone upon your heart That never again our lips might meet, And never so softly fall the sleet In gay-lamped, lyric Highbury. Love made your lily face to shine, But oh, your cheek was salt to mine, As we walked home from Highbury. _

 _O starry street of shop and show, And was it thus long years ago? Was the full tale but waste and woe, And Love but doom in Highbury, My dusty, dreaming Highbury?_

A HAPPY NIGHT

SURBITON AND BATTERSEA

When I received the invitation to the whist-drive at Surbiton my firstthought was, "Not likely!" I had visions of a boring evening: I knewSurbiton. I knew its elegances and petty refinements. I knew itspathetic apings of Curzon Street and Grosvenor Square. I knew itsextremely dull smartness of speech and behaviour. I foresaw that Ishould enjoy myself as much as I did at the Y. M. C. A. Concert whereeverybody sang refined songs and stopped the star from going on becausehe was about to sing the "Hymn to Venus, " which was regarded as "alittle amorous. " The self-conscious waywardness, the deliberateBohemianism of Surbiton, I said to myself, is not for me. I shall eitheroverplay it or underplay it. Certainly I shall give offence if I am mynormal self. For the Bohemianism of Surbiton, I continued, has verystrict rules which nobody in Bohemia ever heard of, and you cannot be aSurbiton Bohemian until you have mastered those rules and learned howgracefully to transgress them. If I throw bread pellets at the girls, they will call me unmannerly. If I don't they will call me stiff. Youmay have noticed that those pseudo-intellectuals who like to thinkthemselves Bohemian are always terrified when they are brought upagainst anything that really is unconventional. On the other hand, yourtrue Bohemian is disgusted if anybody describes him by that word; ifthere is one word that he detests more than Belgravia, it is Bohemia. No, I shall certainly not go. 

Surbiton . . . Surbiton. I repeated the name aloud, tasting its flavour. It has always had to me something brackish, something that fills mymind with grey pain and makes me yearn for my old toys. It is curioushow the places and streets of London assume a character from one's ownmoods. All the big roads have a very sharp character of their own. Ifall other indications were lacking, one might know at once whether theplace were Edgware Road or Old Ford Road, simply by the sounds and bythe sweep of it. Pull down every house and shop, and still Oxford Streetcould never pass itself off as Barking Road. But they have, too, amessage for you. I still believe that a black dog is waiting to maul mein Stepney Causeway. I still dance with delight down Holborn. PeckhamRoad still speaks to me of love. And Maida Vale always means music forme, music all the way. I had my first fright in Stepney Causeway. Ifirst walked down Holborn when I had had a streak of luck. I first knewPeckham Road when first I loved. And I first made acquaintance withMaida Vale and its daintily naughty flats at the idiotic age ofseventeen, when I was writing verses for composers at five shillings atime. They all lived in Maida Vale, and I spent many evenings in themusic-rooms of those worn-out or budding composers and singers who, withthe Jews, have made this district their own; so that Maida Vale smellsalways to me of violets and apple-blossom: it speaks April and May. Thedeep blue of its night skies is spangled with dancing stars. The verysweep and sway of the road to Kilburn and Cricklewood is an ecstasy, andthe windows of the many mansions seem to shine from heaven, so aloof arethey. 

Surbiton, I repeated. I shall certainly not go. I know it too well. Surbiton is one of those comfortable, solid places, and I loathecomfortable places. I always go to Hastings and avoid St. Leonards. Ialways go to Margate and fly from Eastbourne. I always go to Southendand give Knocke-sur-Mer a miss. I like Clacton. I detest Cromer. I loveCamden Town. I hate Surbiton. Surbiton is very much like Hampstead, except that, while Hampstead is horrible for 362 days of the year, there are three days in the year when it is inhabitable. On BankHolidays the simple-minded minor poet like myself can live in it. I wasthere one August Bank Holiday, and, flushed and fatigued with thefull-blooded frolic, I had turned aside to "cool dahn" in Heath Street, when I ran against some highly respectable and intelligent friends. 

"What!" they said. "You here to-day? Ah! observing, I suppose? Gettingcopy? Or perhaps as a literary man you come here for Keats . . . Coleridge. . . And all that?"

"No, " I answered. "I come here for boatswings. I come here to throwsticks at coconuts. I come here to buy ticklers to tickle the girlswith. I come here for halfpenny skips. I come here for donkey rides. Ido not come for Keats. I do not care a damn for Coleridge. I do not cometo gloat about Turner or Constable or anybody else who lived atHampstead a hundred years ago. I come here to enjoy myself--forroundabouts, cockles and whelks, steam-organs--which, after all, are thesame thing as Keats or Coleridge. They're Life. "

Wherefore I felt determined that I could not and would not go to awhist-drive at Surbiton, when I could get the real thing in UpperStreet, Islington. 

Then Georgie called for me at the office, and we went out to lunch. Georgie had sold a picture. He had five pounds in his pocket. We went toMaxim's and had lunch. Georgie insisted on sparkling Moselle, and we hadtwo bottles, and three rounds of Cointreau triple sec. By that time itwas too late to think of going back to work, so I took Georgie to tea ata literary club, and we talked. I then discovered in a panic that it washalf-past six. The whist-drive was at eight, and I had yet to dine andget down to Surbiton. Georgie, by that subtle magnetism which hepossesses, had drawn a bunch of the boys about him, and had induced themto make a night of it with him; so we went to Simpson's to eat, and Ileft them at the table, very merry, and departed to Waterloo. Somewhere, between lunch and dinner, I had unconsciously decided, you see, that Iwould go to Surbiton. I can't remember just when the change in myattitude took place; but there it was. I went to Surbiton, feeling quitegood and almost in love with Surbiton. 

The whist-drive was to be held in the local hall, and when I arrivedcabs and motors were forming a queue. Each cab vomited some daintyarrangement in lace or black cloth. Everybody was "dressed. " (I think Isaid that it was Surbiton. ) Everybody was on best behaviour. Rememberingthe gang at Simpson's, I felt rather a scab, but a glance in the mirrorof the dressing-room reassured me. I recollected some beautiful words ofMr. Mark Sheridan's, "If I'm not clever, thank God, I'm clean. " Theother fellows in the dressing-room were things of beauty. Theirpublic-school accent, with its vile mispronunciation of the Englishtongue, would have carried them into the inner circles of any Europeanchancellery. I never heard anything so supernally affecting. I haveheard many of our greatest actors and singers, but I have never heard somuch music put into simple words, as, "I say, you fellers!"

Everybody was decent. Everybody, you felt sure, could be trusted to dothe decent thing, to do whatever was "done, " and to leave undone thosethings that were not "done, " and, generally, to be a very decent sort. Their features were clean and firm; they were well-tended. Their mindswere clean. They talked clean; and, if they did not display any markedsigns of intelligence or imagination, if they had not the largeness ofpersonality for the noble and big things of life, you felt that at leastthey had not the bent for doing anything dirty. Altogether, a nice set, as insipid people mostly are: what are known in certain circles asGentlemen. 

The girls. . . . Well, they, too, were a decent sort. Not so decent as theboys, of course, because they were girls. They scanned one another alittle too closely. They were too obviously anxious to please. They weretoo obviously out for the evening. Those who were of the at-home typesimpered. They talked in italics. The outdoor type walked like horses. They looked unpleasant, too. I wonder why "Madge" or "Felice" or"Ermyntrude, " or some other writer of toilet columns in the ladies'papers, doesn't tell her outdoor girl readers how hideous they look inevening frocks. Why don't they urge them not to uncover themselves? Forthe outdoor girl has large hands and large arms, both of a beefy red. She has a face and neck tanned by sun and wind, and her ensemble, in afrock cut to the very edge of decency, shows you red hands and forearms, with a sharp dividing line where the white upper arm begins, and a rawface and neck, with the same definite line marking the beginning ofwhite bosom and shoulders. The effect is ridiculous. It is alsorepulsive. I think they ought to know about it. 

The hall was tastefully decorated with white flowers and palms. Therewas a supper-room, which looked good. The prizes, arranged on a table bythe platform, were elegant, well chosen, and of some value. I started ata table with an elderly matron, a very self-conscious Fabian girl, and arather bored-looking man of middle age, who seemed to be bursting totalk--which is the deadliest of sins at a Surbiton whist-drive. Thewhist that I play is the very worst whist that has ever been seen. Itold my partner so, and she said, "Oh, really!" and asked me if I hadhad any tennis yet. Then some one begged us to be seated, and, with mucharrangements of silks and laces and wraps, we sat down and began to playwhist. As I moved from table to table I made no fresh partners. Theywere differently dressed, but otherwise there was no distinction. Theywere a very decent sort. . . . 

After many hours we stopped playing whist, and broke up for chewing andchatting. The bored-looking man of middle age picked me up, and we tooktwo stray girls in tow for wine and sandwiches. The manners at thesupper-crush were elegance itself. The girls smoked cigarettes just alittle too defiantly, but they were quite well-bred about it. A lot ofwell-bred witticisms floated around, with cool laughter and prettysmiles. A knot of girls with two boys talked somewhat decryingly of Shawand Strindberg; and one caught stray straws of talk about Masefield, Beecham opera, Scriabine, Marinetti, Augustus John. Two girls weregiving a concert at the Steinway next week. Others were aiming at theAcademy. Another had had a story accepted by the _English Review_. Theywere a very decent sort. 

The bored man plucked at my arm and suggested that we get rid of thegirls, and go across to "The Railway" and have one. We did. In thelounge of "The Railway" he told me the one about the lady and taxi. Itwas very good, but extremely ill-bred. He was a prominent local doctor, so I told him the one about the medical man on the panel, and about theBishop who put gin in his whisky. Then he told me another . . . Andanother. He remembered the old days at the London. . . . He said he had hadto go to this show because his boy and girl were there. Cards bored himto death, but he liked to be matey with the youngsters. Suppose we hadjust one more?

We had just one more. From across the way came, very sweet and faint, the sound of laughter and young voices. Some one had started a piano, and the Ballade in A Minor was wandering over Surbiton. I looked into mybrandy-glass, and, as I am very young, I rather wanted to cry. I don'tknow why. It was just the mood . . . The soft night, Surbiton, young boysand girls, Chopin, Martell. . . . I said I had to catch an immediate trainto Waterloo, and I drank up and bolted. 

 * * * * *

The other Saturday morning I met a friend at the Bedford Street Bodega. He said, "Laddie, doing anything to-night?" I said, "No; what's on?"

He said: "Like to help your old uncle?"

I said: "Stand on me. "

"Well, it's a little charity show. A Social at Battersea Town Hall. Somelocal club or tennis-party or some jolly old thing of that sort. Allreceipts to the local hospital. All the gang are going to dosomething--kind of informal, you know. I'm the Star. Yes, laddie, I haveat last a shop, for one night only. My fee--seven-and-sixpence andtram-fares. All other services gratuitous. No platform. No auditorium. Just a little old sit-round, drinking limp coffee and eating anæmicpastry, and listening. Come?"

I said I would, and we adventured along the dreary Wandsworth Road, downthe evil-smelling Lavender Hill, into the strenuous endeavour of ClaphamJunction. It was gay with lights and shoppers and parading monkeys. Above us hung a pallid, frosty sky. No stars; no moon; but down in thestreets, warmth and cheer and companionship. We called at the blazing, bustling "Falcon, " which is much more like a railway-junction than thestation itself, and did ourselves a little bit of good, as myprofessional friend put it. Then we mounted to the gas-lit room wherethe fun was to take place. We wandered down long, stark passages, seeking our door. We heard voices, but we saw no door. 

"Harold, " said some one, "sometimes wish you wasn't quite such a fool. "

"What's the matter now, Freddie?" asked A Voice. 

"Why, you know very well it's ten to eight, and you ain't even pulledthe piano out. "

"Gaw! Lucky you reminded me. Come on, old chew-the-fat, give us a handwith the musical-box. "

There were noises "off, " from which it seemed that some one had putsomething on top of something else. There were noises of some onehitting a piece of wood with another piece of wood. 

Then "Damn!" cried A Voice. "Steady on my feet, can't yeh? Bit more tothe right. Whoa! Up your end a bit. 'At's it. When was she tuned last?Give us a scale. "

Some one flourished, and then a bright door opened, and two young men inshirt-sleeves with tousled brows, appeared. 

"Laddie, " cried my friend, dramatically, "is this the apartment for theYoung People's Society In Connection With The Falcon Road Miss----?"

"That's us!" cried, I imagine, Freddie. 

"Then I am Victor Maulever. "

"Oh, step inside, won't you. Bit early, I'm 'fraid. Mr. Diplock ain'there yet. But come in. We got a fire going, and it's sort of turningchilly out, eh?"

We stepped in, and Freddie introduced us. "Harold--this is Mr. Maulever, the actor. Mr. Maulever, may I introduce our sec't'ry, Mr. Worple--Mr. Harold Worple, I should say. "

Mr. Worple came forward and shook hands. "'Scuse my shirt-sleeves, won'tyou, sir?"

"Certainly, laddie, cer-tain-ly, " said Victor, with that _empressement_which has earned him so many drinks in Maiden Lane. "Cer-tain-ly. Andhow are you?"

"Nicely, thanks, " said Harold. "How's 'self?"

"So-so, just so-so. Now just tell me about your little affair, so I canget 'em fixed good and plenty before I start. What d'you think'll gobest; you know 'em better than I do? Shakespeare--what? BransbyWilliams? 'Dream of Eugene Aram'? 'Kissing Cup's Race'? Imitations ofRobey, Formby, Chirgwin--what?"

Harold pondered a moment. Then he had an inspiration. "Sort 'em up if Iwas you, sir. Sort 'em up. Then ev'body'll get something they like, see?"

We entered the clubroom where the Social was to be held--a large, loftyroom, genial, clean, and well-lighted, The floor was bare, but a redrug before the leaping fire gave a touch of cosiness. Small tables werescattered everywhere; draughts here, dominoes there, chess elsewhere, cards in other places. Chairs were distributed with a studied air ofcasual disorder. Newspapers littered a side-bench. The grand piano, byCadenza of The Emporium, stood diagonally across the left centre, and onit lay the violin-case of Freddie, who told us, with modesty, that he"scraped nows and thens. " Along the length of the farther wall stood alarge, white-robed table, heaped with coffee-urns, sandwiches, buns, cakes, biscuits, bananas, and other delicacies. All these arrangementswere the joint work of Freddie and Harold. At five minutes to eight thecompany arrived. At first it trickled in by stray couples, but later itswelled to a generous flood, each couple nodding in acknowledgment ofthe deprecatory greetings of the stewards: "Here we are again, what-oh?"and, in more professional tones: "Gentlemen's Room to the Right, Ladies'Room to the Left!" Victor and myself stood by the fire, Victor receivingbashful but definitely admiring glances from the girls, for he is of theold school, and looks more like Sir Henry Irving even than Mr. H. B. Irving, except that he does not limp. For the first few minutes theatmosphere was cold. The boys obviously wanted to talk to Victor, butthey seemed all too shy; so I gave Victor the tip, and with hisexquisite courtesy he moved over to a group of the boys and the girlsand, with a bow, asked a girl with a baby face, that burnt delightfullyred under his attention, if he might take a seat on that settee. In justa minute and a half the thaw set in, and he had the company about himbubbling with laughter and excited comment. As other groups came in fromthe dressing-rooms they made at once for the centre of attraction, andsoon Victor was the centre of a crowd that buzzed about him like beesabout a flower, seeking the honey of laughter. I doubt if he was ever somuch on the "spot" before. I could see him revelling in it. I could seehim telling Rule's about it. But in the middle of his best story, Freddie bustled up. 

"Oh, 'scuse me, sir, but I forgot to tell you before. I said sort 'emup, but . . . You might just be careful, 'cos the Vicar's dropping induring the evening. I'll give you the word when he's here, so's you'llbe sure to hand 'em something quiet. It's all right until he comes. Justgive 'em anything you like. "

And Victor waved a faded hand, and said, "Righto, laddie, righto. I getyou, " and turned again to the blushing little girl, who certainly seemednow to be Quite The Lady in her manner of receiving his attentions. Under his expansive mood everybody seen knew everybody else, and alltraces of stiffness vanished. The company was a little mixed, and it wasinevitable that there should be demarcations of border, breed, andbirth. Some were shop-assistants, some were mechanics, some were clerks, some were even Civil Servants; and as all were Christians they werenaturally hesitant about loving one another. But Victor broke down allbarriers by his large humanity and universal appeal. 

Suddenly, there was a hammering on the floor, and a voice called, "Attention, please!" And then--"Duet for violin and piano: Miss OliveCraven and Mr. Fred Parslow. "

We broke into little groups, and settled ourselves. Then came a crash ofchords from the piano, and a prolonged reiteration of the A whileFreddie tuned. They set to work. I heard the opening bars, and I held mybreath in dismay. They were going to play a Tchaikowsky Concerto. Butthe dismay was premature. They _played_; both of them. I do not knowwhether Freddie was engaged to Olive, but there was a marvelloussympathy uniting them; and, though little technical flaws appeared hereand there, the beauty of the work was brought right out. Freddie andOlive were musicians. It was a delicious quarter of an hour. They got abig handful of applause, and then Freddie asked: "Ready, sir?" andVictor said he was, and Freddie said, "What is it?" and conveyed theanswer to the portly old fellow who seemed to be president. After aminute or so, during which the girls chattered and giggled and comparedribbons and flounces, he called again for silence, and a tremendousoutburst of clapping and stamping followed his announcement: "Mr. VictorMaulever, the famous West End actor, will recite 'Who'll have a BloodOrange?'"

Victor made good with his first three sentences. In the language of hisprofession, he got 'em with both hands. They rose at him. He had 'emstung to death. He did what he liked with 'em. The girls giggled andkicked little feet. They shamelessly broke into his periods with"_Isn't_ he IT?" and he had to wait while the laughs went round. 

When he had finished he got such a hand as I'm sure he never had in thewhole of his stage career. They wouldn't let him sit down. They wouldgive him no rest; he must go straight on and give more. So he gave themtwo more, including his impressions of George Robey, G. P. Huntley, JoeElvin, R. G. Knowles, and Wilkie Bard singing "Little Grey Home in theWest. "

Then the President appealed to the audience to let poor Mr. Mauleverhave a rest and a little refreshment; and at once the girls rushed tothe table and fought with one another for sandwiches and coffee andcakes with which they might minister to the exhausted Thespian. The boysdid not get savage about this; they seemed to share in the fun, and whennew girl-arrivals came in, they were solemnly introduced to the star. "Oh, Mr. Maulever, may I introduce my friend, Miss Redgrove?" MissRedgrove smiled becomingly, and Victor rose, bowed, extended hisgraceful hand, and said: "Delighted, Miss Redgrove!" and Miss Redgrovesaid: "Pleased to meet you!" And in reply to Victor's inquiry: "I hopeyou're well?" she said that she mustn't grumble. 

A few of the girls wore evening frocks; others, with more limitedmeans, contented themselves with Sunday frocks or delicately colouredrobes that had been manoeuvred into something that showed enough whiteneck and bosom to be at once alluring and decorous. There was nothing ofthe plain or the dowdy. They were all out for enjoyment, and they meantto make the best of everything, themselves included. Frills andfluffiness were the order. They were all darlings. 

A gentle raillery was the note of intercourse between girls and boys. One of the little girls, a typist, I gathered, in a mercantile office, whispered to her boy that Victor was A Love, and added that she alwaysdid like men best when they were old and had grey hair. They were so . . . Kind of . . . If he knew what she meant. She said she would most likelyfall in love with a grey-haired man, and her boy said: "Yes, of courseyou _would_. " Whereupon she told him not to be so sarcastic. 

The attitude of gentlemen to ladies was also delightful. Some of thegentlemen were guilty of bad manners, in the Surbiton sense of the word. That is to say, they did not all do what was "done, " and they veryfrequently did things that were not "done" by Good People. Buteverything they did was inspired by a consideration for the comfort ofothers. They committed _gaucheries_, but the fount thereof waskindliness. 

The conversation was varied. Some talked frocks, some music, somepicture-palaces, some odds-and-ends. Those who affected theatres stuckfirmly to Victor, and lured him on to talk about the idols of the stage. The dear boy _might_ have told them things . . . He might havedisillusioned their golden heads about certain actor-managers of whom hehas had intimate experience; but he didn't, and I rather liked him forit. While more recitations and more music went round, he told themheroic stories about their heroes. He told them strange stories andbeautiful stories and funny stories; but never, never disparagingstories. One saw their faces glow with wonder. Then the time came forhim to work again. He certainly earned that seven-and-six. This time theVicar was there, so he handed them "The Dream of Eugene Aram. "

Again he got 'em. The girls shivered and moved nearer to their boys. Hegot his horror in voice and face and gesture and pauses. There wasperfect silence while he did it. There was perfect silence for someseconds afterwards. Then came a rain of clapping, and the Vicar walkedacross to him and shook him by the hand, showering warm compliments uponhim, and trusting that he would be kind enough to come again. 

Then, while we drank coffee and handed cakes to the girls, the reverendgentleman stood on the rug before the fire and gave us an informaladdress. It was all very bright and homely, and the merry twinkle in theold man's eye when he saw the cluster of girls about Victor told us thathe was very much alive to this world. 

At half-past ten the meeting broke up, with a final effort by Victor intwo of Albert Chevalier's songs. The girls pelted to the dressing-roomsand returned, robed for the street and radiant, and all anxious to shakehands and bid farewell to the Star. They literally danced round him, andfought to shake hands with him, and the boys fought with them. Then, when all had saluted him, each boy appropriated a girl. Those who wereknown tucked arms in arms and marched off. Those who were strangersapproached deferentially, and said: "You got a friend, miss? If not . . . M'I see you home?" and were at once elected. 

Victor and the Vicar and the President and myself remained behind tillthe last, while Freddie and Harold "cleared up the mess, " as they said. Then Victor winked at the two boys, and lured them to the passage. "Well, boys, " he said, jingling his three half-crowns which had justbeen paid him, "what about it? A short one at 'The Falcon'--what?"

They really blushed. The honour was too much. "Oh--really--well--verykind of you, Mr. Maulever, I'm sure. " They stammered through their hotsmiles, but they came along, and after the short one at "The Falcon"they lingered a moment. They appeared nervous. It seemed that they hadsomething on their minds. Harold looked at Freddie and Freddie looked atHarold, and Freddie said emphatically, "You. " So Harold, very rapidly, turned and said--

"I was going t'say, Mr. Maulever--I mean, would you--ah--might I ask ifyou and your friend'd have another--with _us_?" He was obviously glad toget it over. 

Victor smiled. "Well, laddie, it's a cold night. Dammit, we _will_ haveanother. "

So we did. As a matter of fact, we had three others; and in the loudpassage of "The Falcon" we parted with the lads, who wrung Victor'shand, and said he'd given them a delightful evening, and they hoped he'drecite for their next Social, adding that he was a real sport. 

I saw Victor to his 'bus, and as he leaped aboard he said he had enjoyedhimself. He turned half-way up the stairs to cry his customaryvalediction. 

"_Si longtemps_, old kiddo. Cling good and tight to the water-wagon!"

A WORKER'S NIGHT

THE ISLE OF DOGS

_THE WORK CHILD_

_I_

 _Fair flakes of wilding rose Entwine for Seventeen, With lovely leaves of violet That dares not live till fields forget The grey that drest their green with snows, And grow from grey to green. _

 _And when the wreath is twining, Oh, prithee, have a care! Weave in no bloom of subtle smell; The simple ones she loves too well. Let violets on her neck lie shining, Wild rose in her hair. _

 _And bring her rose-winged fancies, From shadowy shoals of dream, To clothe her in the wistful hour, When girlhood steals from bud to flower. Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, Bring her the faery Gleam!_

_II_

 _At the world's gate she stands, Silent and very still; And lone as that one star that lights The delicate dusk of April nights. Oh, let love bind her holy hands, And fetter her from ill!_

 _Her tumbled tresses cling Adown her like a veil. And cheeks and curls as sweetly chime As verses with a rounding rhyme. Surely there is not anything So valiant and so frail. _

 _In faith and without fear, She brings to a rude throng, At war with beauty and with truth, The wonder of her blossomy youth. And faith shall wither to a sneer, And need shall silence song. _

_III_

 _Her soul is a soft flame, Set in a world of grey. Help her, O Life, to keep its shrine That her white window's vigilant sign May pierce the tangled mists of shame, Where we have lost our way!_

 _So linger at this day, My little maid serene! Or, since the dancing feet must go, Take Childhood with you still, and so Live in a year-worn world, but stay For ever Seventeen!_

A WORKER'S NIGHT

THE ISLE OF DOGS

I am not of those who share the prevailing opinions of the Isle of Dogs:I do not see it as a haunt of greyness and distress. To the informedmind it is full and passionate. Every one of its streets is asharp-flavoured adventure. Where others find insipidity I find salt andfire. Its shapes and sounds and silences and colours have allured mefrom first acquaintance. For here, remember, are the Millwall Docks, andhere, too, is Cubitt Town. . . . Of course, like all adorable things, ithas faults. I am ready to confess that the cheap mind, which findsBeauty only in that loathly quality called Refinement, will suffer manypains by a sojourn in its byways. It will fill them with ashen despair. In the old jolly days it was filthy; it was full of perils, smelly, insanitary, crumbling; but at least one could live in it. To-day it hasbeen taken in hand by those remote Authorities who make life miserablefor us. It is reasonably clean; it is secure; the tumbling cottages havebeen razed, and artisans' dwellings have arisen in their stead. Itshigh-ways--Glengall Road, East Ferry Road, Manchester Road--are but rowsof uniform cottages, with pathetically small front gardens and frowzy"backs, " which, throughout the week, flap dismally with the mostintimate items of their households' underwear. Its horizon is a fewgrotto-like dust-shoots, decorated with old bottles and condensed-milktins. 

It is, I admit, the ugly step-child of parishes; but, then, I love allugly step-children. It is _gauche_ and ridiculous. It sprawls. It ispermanently overhung with mist. It has all the virtues of the LondonCounty Council, and it is very nearly uninhabitable. Very nearlyuninhabitable . . . But not quite. 

For here are many thousands of homes, and where a thousand homes aregathered together there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, mygenteel lambs of Kensington, in this region of ashpits and waterways andbroken ships and dry canals are girls and garlands and all the oldlovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along itswinding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, thenlife in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and lassitude, and, fromthe rich faces that pass you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it mustalways be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at thegates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock of chattering magpies--the little work-girls--and seeif I am not right. 

And the colour. . . . There is nothing in the world like it for depth andglamour. I know no evenings so tender as those that gather about theIsland: at once heartsome and subdued. The colour of street and sky andwater, sprinkled with a million timid stars, is an ecstasy. You cannotname it. You see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, rose, silver. The clouds that flank the high-shouldered buildings and chimneysshare in these subtle changes, and shift and shift from definite hues tosome haunting scheme that was never seen in any colourman's catalogue. 

On the night when I took Georgie round the Island a hard, clear frostwas abroad. The skies glittered with steady stars. The streets seemedstrangely wide and frank, clear-cut, and definite. A fat-faced moonlighted them. The waters were swift and limpid, flecked with bold light. The gay public-house at the Dock gates shone sharp, like a cut gem. Georgie had never toured the Island before, and he enjoyed itthoroughly. As we stood on the shuddering bridge the clear night spreadsuch a stillness over the place that you could almost hear a goods trainshunt; and we stood there watching the berthing of a big P. & O. Formany pensive minutes. 

By the way, you ought to know Georgie; he is a London character. Perhapsyou do, for he has thousands of acquaintances. He knows all that thereis to know about London--or, at least, the real London, by which phraseI exclude the foreign quarters and the Isle of Dogs. These he does notregard as part of London. His acquaintance among waiters alone is amatter for wonder. At odd times you may meet him in a bar with astranger, an impressive-looking personage who, you conjecture, is anattaché of a foreign Embassy. But no; you do him an injustice; he isgreater than that. Georgie introduces you with a histrionic flourish--

"This is Mr. Burke--young Tommy Burke. This is Carlo, of Romano's. " Or, "This is young Tommy. This is Frank from the Cornhill Chop House, " orHenry from Simpson's, or Enrico from Frascati's, or Jules from Maxim's. 

I believe that Georgie knows more about food and feeding than any man inLondon. I don't mean that he could seriously compete withLieutenant-Colonel Newnham Davis. He couldn't draw up a little dinnerfor you at the Ritz or Claridge's or Dieudonné's. But, then, here againhe shows his prejudices; for he doesn't regard a dinner at the Ritz orClaridge's as anything to do with eating. His is the quieter sphere; buthe has made it his own. There is something uncanny about his knowledgein this direction. He knows where you can get a meal at two o'clock inthe morning, and he can tell you exactly what you will get. He can tellyou in an instant what is the prime dish at any obscure littleeating-house and the precise moment at which it is on the table. Heknows the best house for cabbage, and the house to be avoided if you arethinking of potatoes. He knows where to go for sausage and mashed, andhe can reel off a number of places which must be avoided when theirharicot mutton is on. He knows when the boiled beef is most _à la mode_at Wilkinson's, when the pudding at the "Cheshire Cheese" is just so, and when the undercut at Simpson's is most to be desired. You meet him, say, on Tuesday, and, in course of conversation, you wonder where tolunch. "Tuesday, " he will murmur, "Tuesday. What d'you fancy? It'sfowl-and-bacon day at 'The Mitre. ' That's always good. Or it'sstewed-steak day at 'The Old Bull, ' near the Bank; beautiful steak; doneto a turn at one-fifteen. Or it's curry day at the Oriental place inHolborn, if you like curries. Or it's chop toad-in-the-hole day atSalter's; ready at two o'clock. The one in Strand's the best. But don'tgo sharp at two. Wait till about two-twenty. The batter ain't quite whatit should be at two sharp; but just after that it's perfect. Perfect, myboy!"

We crossed the bridge to a running accompaniment from Georgie about thetimes he had had in the old days before I was born or thought of--he isalways flinging this in my face. Motor-'buses were roaring through thelong, empty streets, carrying loads of labourers from the docks to theirnorthern homes, or work-girls from the northern factories to their homesin the Island. The little, softly lighted toy and sweetstuff shopsgleamed upon us out of the greyness, and the tins of hot saveloys andbaked apples, which the hawkers were offering, smelt appetizing. Fromtiny stalls outside the sweetstuff shops you may still purchase thoseluscious delicacies of your childhood which seem to have disappearedfrom every other quarter of London. I mean the toffee-apple about which, if you remember, Vesta Victoria used to sing so alluringly. 

I have two friends residing here--one at Folly Wall and one in HavanaStreet. I decided that we would call on the latter, so Georgie stoppedat "The Regent, " and took in a bottle of Red Seal for my friend and alittle drop of port for the missus--"just by way, " as he explained, "ofbeing matey. " My friend, a gateman at one of the dock stations, had justgone home, and was sitting down to his tea. There is no doubt that thehousewives of the Island know how to prepare their old men's tea. Innearly every house in this district you will find, at about six or seveno'clock, in the living-room of the establishment, a good old hot stewgoing, or tripe and onions, or fish and potatoes, or a meat-pudding; andthis, washed down with a pint of tea, is good enough hunting for anyhuman. Old Johnnie comes from the docks in his dirty working clothes;but before ever he ventures to sit down to table he goes into thescullery, strips, and has what he calls a "slosh down, " afterwardsreappearing in a clean print shirt and serge trousers. Then, in thiscomfortable attire, he attacks whatever the missus has got for him, andstudies the evening paper, to ascertain, firstly, what the political(i. E. Labour) situation is, and, secondly, what's good for to-morrow'sbig race; for Johnnie, quite innocently, likes to have a shilling on allthe classics--the Lincoln, the Cambridgeshire, the Caesarewitch, theGold Cup, City and Sub. , the Oaks and the Derby, and so on. 

After his meal he shaves and puts on a collar. Sometimes he will takethe missus to the pictures, or, if it is Saturday, he will go marketingwith her in Poplar, or in the summer for a moonlight sail on the Thamessteamers. Other nights he attends his slate club, or his union, or dropsin at one or other of the cheery bars on the Island, to meet his palsand talk shop. The Isle of Dogs, I may tell you, is a happyhunting-ground for all those unhappy creatures who can find no congenialsociety in their own circles: I mean superior Socialists, Christianworkers, Oxford and Cambridge settlement workers, and the immatureintellectuals. There are literally dozens and dozens of churches andchapels on the Island, and dozens of halls and meeting-places wherelectures are given. The former do not capture Johnnie, but the latterdo, and he will often wash and brush up of an evening to hear someyoung boy from Oxford deliver a thoroughly uninformed exposition of KarlMarx or Nietzsche. The Island is particularly happy in being sofrequently patronized by those half-baked ladies and gentlemen, theFabians, who have all the vices of the middle classes, and--what is moreterrible--all the virtues of the middle classes. 

The majority of Socialists, if you observe, are young people of thewell-to-do middle classes. They embrace the blue-serge god, not from anyconviction, not from any sense of comradeship with their overworked andunderpaid fellows, but because Socialism gives them an excuse for escapefrom their petty home life and pettier etiquettes. As Socialists theycan have a good time, they can go where they choose, do as they choose, and come home at what hour they choose without fearing the wrath of thatcurious figure whom they name The Pater. They have merely to explainthat they are Socialists, and their set say, "Oh . . . Socialists . . . Yes, of course. " Socialism opens to them the golden gates of that Paradise, Bohemia. The freedom of the city is thus presented to them; and theyhave found it so convenient and so inexpensive that they have adoptedSocialism in their thousands. But observe them in the company of thehorny-handed, the roughshod, and the ill-spoken; they are either ill atease or frankly patronizing. They are Bohemians among aristocrats andaristocrats among Bohemians. 

Johnnie is just beginning to be noted at their meetings as a debater ofsome importance. In fact, after the lecture, he will rise and deliverquestions so shrewd and penetrating that the young folk of Sidcup andBlackheath and Hampstead have found it a saving to their personaldignity to give him a seat on the platform, where, of course, he is notonly rendered harmless to them but is an encouragement to other sons ofthe soil in the audience. 

It is in the region of the Island that most of the battles take placebetween organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there beany industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoopdozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitategenerally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees--gailythey trip along and take charge of the hapless workers, until the poorfellows or girls are hustled this way and that, driven, coerced, commanded, and counter-commanded till, in desperation, they take refuge, one and all, in the nearest bar. Then the Fabians, the Social Democrats, the Clarionettes, the Syndicalists, the Extremists, the Arbitrators, andthe Union leaders return to Blackheath and Sidcup and Bedford Park, crying that it is useless to attempt to help the poor; they won't behelped: they are hopeless dipsomaniacs. 

Here were organized those Unemployed marches which made our streets socheery a few years ago. I once joined Johnnie on a tramp with one ofthese regiments, and it was the most spiritless march I have ever beenin. The men didn't want to march. It was the Social Service darlings whowanted to form them into a pretty procession, and lead them all roundLondon as actual proof of the Good that was being done among the RightPeople. We started at nine o'clock on a typically London morning. Theday was neither cold nor warm, neither light nor dark. The sky was aneven stretch of watery grey, and the faces that passed us were notkindly. Mostly they suggested impaired digestions or guilty consciences. We had a guard of honour of about ten hefty constables, and for us, asfor the great ones of the town, the traffic was held up that we mightpass. Among the crowd our appointed petitioners, with labelledcollecting-boxes, worked with subdued zeal, and above the rumble of the'buses and the honk-honk of motors and the frivolous tinkle of hansomsrose their harsh, insistent rattle. Now and again a gust of wind wouldsend a dozen separate swirls of dust into our eyes. People stared at usmuch as one stares at an Edgware Road penny-museum show. We were notmen. We were a procession of the Unemployed: An Event. We were a jollylot. Most of us stared at the ground or the next man's back; only a fewgazed defiantly around. None talked. Possibly a few were thinking, andif any of them were imaginative, that slow shuffle might have suggesteda funeral march of hopes and fears. There was a stillness about it thatwas unpleasant; a certain sickness in the air. I think the crowd musthave wondered what we were going to do next. You may punch anEnglishman's nose, and heal the affront with apologies and a drink. Youmay call him a liar, and smooth over the incident by the same means. Youmay take bread out of his mouth, and still he may be pacified. But whenyou touch his home and the bread of the missus and the kids, you aretouching something sacred and thereby inviting disaster; and I think thecrowd was anticipating some concerted assault. As a matter of fact, wewere the tamest lot of protesters you ever saw. I don't think any of usrealized that he had anything sacred. 

As we reached Piccadilly Circus the watery grey suddenly split, andthrough the ragged hole the sun began to peer: a pale sun that mighthave been out all night. It streamed weakly upon us, showing up ourdismal clothes, glancing off the polished rails of the motor-'buses andthe sleek surfaces of the hansoms. But it gave us no heart. Our escortsdeigned us an occasional glance, but they had a soft job; we were notgnashing our teeth or singing the "Marseillaise" or "The Red Flag. "People stared . . . And stared. The long black snake of our processionthreaded disconsolately into Knightsbridge. Hardly a word or a sign ofinterest escaped us. On the whole four hours' march there was but onelaugh. That came from a fellow on the near side, who thought he'd founda cigar by the kerb, and fell and hurt his knee in the effort to securehis treasure--a discoloured chip of wood. Curiously enough, we didn'tlaugh. It was he who saw the fine comedy of the incident. 

We debouched into Church Street, so to Notting Hill, and up the wretchedBayswater Road to Oxford Street. The sun was then--at oneo'clock--shining with a rich splendour. The roadway blazed. Under theshop-blinds, which drooped forward like heavy lids over the tired eyesof the windows, little crowds from Streatham and Kentish Town wereshopping. They stared at us. Through the frippery of this market-placewe reached the homelier atmosphere of Holborn. The rattle of our boxes'had grown apace, and we made small bets among ourselves as to what thetotal takings would be. I was thankful when the march or solemn walk wasended. For days afterwards my ears rang with the incessantclat-clat-clatter of those boxes, and for days afterwards I was hauntedby those faces that stared at us, and then turned to stare at us, andthen called other faces to stare at us. Nobody in the whole marchtroubled us. Nobody cursed us; nobody had a kind word for us. They justgave us their pennies, because we had been "got up" for that processionby those dear, hard-working friends of theirs. On our return, and afterthe very thin _croûte-au-pot_ that was served out to us, we wereaddressed on the subject of our discontents. I forget what they were, if, indeed, I ever knew, for I had joined the march only as Johnnie'sguest. 

Whether Johnnie really knows or cares anything about economics I cannotsay. I only know that I don't like him in that part. I like him bestsitting round his open kitchen-range, piled with coke, or sitting in thefour-ale bar of "The Griffin. " For what he does know a tremendous lotabout is human nature; only he does not know that he knows it. Hisknowledge drops out of him, casually, in side remarks. At his post onthe docks he observes not only white human nature but black and yellowand brown, and he knows how to deal with it all. He can calm a squabbleamong Asiatics of varying colour and creed, when everybody else ishelpless; not by strength of arm or position or character, but simplybecause he appreciates the subtle differences of human natures, andbecause he understands the needs and troubles of the occasion. 

"Yes, " he has said to me sometimes, on my asking whether he didn't findhis night-watch rather lonely--"yes, I suppose some chaps would find itlonely. But not me. If you're a philosopher, you ain't ever lonely. Another thing--there's too much to do, old son. Night-watchman at adocks ain't the same thing as night-watchman at the road-up. Notterbitterfit. Thieves, my boy. Wouldn't think they'd venture into aplace the size of ours, perhaps? Don't they, though? And, my word, if Icatch 'em at it! Not big burglars, of course, but the small pilferinglot. Get in during the day they do, and hide behind bales and in oddcorners. Then they come out when it's dark and nose around, and theirlittle fingers, in spite of their Catechism, start right away at pickingand stealing. . . . Funny lot, these jolly Lascars. If I was manager of amusic-hall and I wanted a real good star turn--something fresh--I'dstand at my gate and bag the crew of a Dai Nippon, just as they comeoff, and then bung 'em on just as they are, and let 'em sing and dancejust as they do when they've drawn their pay. That'd be a turn, old son. I bet that'd be a goer. Something your West End public ain't ever seen;something that'd knock spots off 'em and make their little fleshescreep. Of course it looks fiercer'n it really is. All that therechanting and chucking knives about is only, as you might say, ceremonial. But if they happen to come off at two o'clock of a foggywinter morning--my word, it don't do to be caught bending then! Butlucky for me I know most of 'em. And they know me. And even if they'reaway for three months on end, next time they're back at West India theybring some little 'love gift' for the bloke at the gate--that's me. Often I've had to patch 'em up at odd times, after they've had a thicknight with the boys and have to join their boats. Sometimes one of 'emtumbles into the dock half an hour before she sails, with a smashed lipand that kind of air about him that tells you he can see a dock jam fullof shipping and is trying to sort 'em out and find his little show. Ofcourse, as a watchman and a man, I kind of sympathize. We've all done itone time or another. I remember one night . . . "

And when Johnnie remembers, that is the time to drink up and haveanother, for once he starts yarning he is not easily stopped. Wonderfulanecdotes he has to relate, too; not perhaps brilliant stories, or evenstories with a point of any kind, but stories brimful of atmosphere, stories salt of the sea or scented with exotic bloom. They begin, perhaps, "Once, off Rangoon, " or "I remember, a big night in Honolulu, "or Mauritius, or Malabar, or Trinidad. Before the warning voice cries, "Time, gentermen!" you have circled the globe a dozen times under thespell of Johnnie's rememberings. 

You may catch him any night of the week, and find him ready to yarn, save on Saturdays. Saturday night is always dedicated to the missus andto shopping in Poplar or Blackwall. Shopping on Saturday nights in thesedistricts is no mere domestic function: it is a festival, an event. Johnnie washes and puts on his second-best suit, and then he and themissus depart from the Island, he bearing a large straw marketing bag, she carrying a string-bag and one of those natty stout-paper bags givenaway by greengrocers and milliners. As soon as the 'bus has tossed theminto Salmon Lane, off Commercial Road, they begin to revel. 

Salmon Lane on a Saturday night is very much like any other shoppingcentre in the more humane quarters of London. Shops and stalls blaze androar with endeavour. The shops, by reason of their more respectablestanding, affect to despise stalls, but when it comes to competition itis usually stalls first and shops hanging round the gate. The placereeks of naphtha, human flesh, bad language, and good-nature. Newly-killed rabbits, with their interiors shamelessly displayed, suspend themselves around the stalls while their proprietors workjoyfully with a chopper and a lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper isnever abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, and many of them haveto await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up hiswages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfullyfingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers'shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherlessbrothers and sisters with the few shillings which Dad has doled out. Whoknows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending value oftwopence-halfpenny? Observe her as she lays in her Sunday gorge. Twopenn'orth of "pieces" from the butcher's to begin with (for twopence youget a bagful of oddments of meat, trimmings from various joints, goodnourishing bones, bits of suet, and, if the assistant thinks you havenice eyes, he will throw in some skirt). Then to the large greengrocer'sshop for a penn'orth of "specks" (spotted or otherwise damaged fruit, and vegetables of every kind). Of this three penn'orth the most valuableitem is the bones, for these, with a bit of carrot and potato and onion, will make a pot of soup sufficient in itself to feed the kiddies for twodays. Then, at the baker's, you get a market basket full of stale breadfor twopence, and, seeing it's for Sunday, you spend another penny andget five stale cakes. At the grocer's, two ounces of tea, two ounces ofmargarine, and a penn'orth of scraps from the bacon counter for Dad'sbreakfast. And there you have a refection for the gods. 

Observe also the pale young man who lodges in some remote garret byLimehouse Hole. He has but a room, and his landlady declines theresponsibility of "doing" for him. He must, therefore, do his ownshopping, and he does it about as badly as it can be done. His demeanoursuggests a babe among wolves, innocence menaced by the wiles ofBabylon; and sometimes motherly old dears audibly express pity at hishelplessness, which flusters him still more, so that he leaves hischange on the counter. 

The road is a black gorge, rent with dancing flame. The public-houselamps flare with a jovial welcome for the jaded shopper, and everymoment its doors flap open, and fling their fire of joy on the alreadyovercharged air. Between the stalls parade the youth and beauty, makingappointments for the second house at the Poplar Hippodrome, orassignations for Sunday evening. 

As the stalls clear out the stock so grows the vociferousness of theirproprietors, and soon the ear becomes deadened by the striving rush ofsound. Every stall and shop has its wide-mouthed laureate, singing itspresent glories and adding lustre to its latest triumphs. 

"I'll take any price yeh like, price yeh like! Comerlong, comerlong, Ma!This is the shop that does the biz. Buy-buy-buy-uy!"

"Walk up, ladies, don't be shy. Look at these legs. Look at 'em. Don'tkeep looking at 'em, though. Buy 'em. Buy 'em. Sooner you buy 'em soonerI can get 'ome and 'ave my little bath. Come along, ladies; it's a dirtynight, but thank God I got good lodgings, and I hope you got the same. Buy-buy-buy!"

"'Ere's yer lovely bernanas. Fourer penny. Pick 'em out where yeh like!"

In one ear a butcher yells a madrigal concerning his little shoulders. In the other a fruit merchant demands to know whether, in all yournacheral, you ever see anything like his melons. Then a yard or sobehind you an organ and cornet take up their stand and add "Tipperary"to the swelling symphony. But human ears can receive so much, and onlyso much, sound; and clapping your hands over your ears, you seek thechaste seclusion, for a few minutes, of the saloon of "The Black Boy, "or one of the many fried-fish bars of the Lane. 

Still later in the evening the noise increases, for then the stalls areanxious to clear out their stock at any old price. The wise wife--andJohnnie's missus is one--waits until this hour before making her largepurchases. For now excellent joints and rabbits and other trifles areput up for auction. The laureates are wonderful fellows, many of them, Iimagine, decayed music-hall men. A good man in this line makes a verydecent thing out of it. The usual remuneration is about eight or tenshillings for the night and whatever beer they want. And if you areshouting for nearly six hours in the heavy-laden air of Salmon Lane, youwant plenty of beer and you earn all you get. They have a spontaneouswit about them that only the Cockney possesses. Try to take a rise outof one of them, and you will be sadly plucked. Theirs is Falstaffianhumour--large and clustering: no fine strokes, but huge, rich-colouredsweeps. It is useless to attempt subtleties in the roar of a Saturdaynight. What you have to aim at is the obvious--but with a twist;something that will go home at once; something that can be yelled or, ifthe spirit moves you, sung. It is, in a word, the humour of the Crowd. 

At about eleven o'clock, the laureate, duly refreshed, will mount on theoutside counter, where he can easily reach the rows of joints. Aroundhim gathers the crowd of housewives, ready for the auction. He takes thefirst--a hefty leg of mutton. 

"Nah then!" he cries challengingly, "nah then! Just stop shooting yermarth at the _OO_lans for a bit, and look at this 'ere bit o' meat. _Meat_ was what I said, " with a withering glance at the rivalestablishment across the Lane, where another laureate is addressinganother crowd. "Meat, mother, meat. If yer don't want Meat, then itain't no use comin' 'ere. If yer wants a cut orf an animal what comefrom Orstralia or Noo Zealand, then it ain't no use comin' 'ere. Overthe road's where they got them. They got joints over there what comefrom the Anty-Podeys, and they ain't paid their boat-passage yet. No, mygels, this what I got 'ere is Meat. None of your carvings orf a cow whatlooks like a fiddlecase on trestles. You--sir--just cast yer eye overthat. Carry that 'ome to the missus, and she'll let yer stay out till aquarter to ten, and yeh'll never find a button orf yer weskit long asyeh live. That's the sort o' meat to turn the kiddies into sojers andsailors. Nah then--what say to six-and-a-arf?"

He fondles the joint much as one would a babe in long clothes, dandlingit, patting it, stroking it, exhibiting it, while the price comessteadily down from six-and-a-half to six, five, four-and-a-half, andfinally is knocked down at four. Often a prime-looking joint will go aslow as twopence a pound, and the smaller stuff is practically given awaywhen half-past twelve is striking. 

It is the same with the other shops--greengrocery, fish, and fruit. Allis, so far as possible, cleared out before closing time, and only enoughis held in reserve to supply that large army of Sunday morning shopperswho are unable to shop on Saturday night owing to Bill's festivities. 

 * * * * *

That is one worker's night. But there are others. There are thoseworkers whose nights are not domestic, and who live in the commonlodging-houses and shelters which are to be found in every district inLondon. There are two off Mayfair. There are any number round Belgravia. Seven Dials, of course, is full of them, for there lodge the CoventGarden porters and other early birds. In these houses you will findmembers of all-night trades that you have probably never thought ofbefore. I met in a Blackwall Salvation Army Shelter a man who looks outfrom a high tower, somewhere down the Thames, all night. He starts atten o'clock at night, and comes off at six, when he goes home to hislodging-house to bed. I have never yet been able to glean from himwhose tower it is he looks out from, or what he looks out for. Thenthere are those exciting people, the scavengers, who clean our streetswhile we sleep, with hose-pipe and cart-brush; the printers, who run offour newspapers; the sewer-men, who do dirty work underground;railwaymen, night-porters, and gentlemen whose occupation is notmentioned among the discreet. 

The Salvation Army Shelters are very popular among the lodging-housepatrons, for you get good value there for very little money, and, bypaying weekly, instead of nightly, you get reductions and abetter-appointed dormitory. I know many street hawkers who have livedfor years at one Shelter, and would not think of using a commonlodging-house. The most popular quarter for this latter class of houseis Duval Street, Spitalfields. At one time the reputation of this streetwas most noisome; indeed, it was officially known as the worst street inLondon. It holds a record for suicides, and, I imagine, for murders. Itwas associated in some way with that elusive personality, Jack theRipper; and the shadow of that association has hung over it for ever, blighting it in every possible way. To-day it is but a very narrow, dirty, ill-lit street of common lodging-houses within the meaning of theAct, and, though it is by no means so gay and devilish as it is supposedto have been of old, they do say that the police still descend first onDuval Street in cases of local murder where the culprit has, as thenewspapers say, made good his escape. I do not recommend it as apleasure-jaunt for ladies or for the funny and fastidious folk ofBayswater. They would suffer terribly, I fear. The talk of the peoplewould lash them like whips; the laughter would sear like hot irons. Thenoises bursting through the gratings from the underground cellars wouldbe like a chastisement on the naked flesh, and shame and smarting andfear would grip them. The glances of the men would sting like scorpions. The glances of the women would bite like fangs. For these reasons, while I do not recommend it, I think a visit would do them good; itwould purify their spotty little minds with pity and terror. For I thinkDuval Street stands easily first as one of the affrighting streets ofLondon. There is not the least danger or disorder; but the tradition hasgiven it an atmosphere of these things. Here are gathered all the mostunhappy wrecks of London--victims and apostles of vice and crime. Thetramps doss here: men who have walked from the marches of Wales or fromthe Tweed border, begging their food by the way. Their clothes hang fromthem. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet. Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides toGood Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe ina manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known asthe Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on nightduty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a localdoctor passed him. "Say, " said the doctor, with a chuckle, "you'restanding rather close, aren't you? Want to take something away withyou?" "Not exactly that, sir; but it's lonely round here for the nightstretch, and, somehow, it's kind of company if I can feel the littlebeggars dropping on my helmet. "

In this street you are on the very edge of the civilized world. All areoutcasts, even among their own kind. All are ready to die, and too sickeven to go to the trouble of doing it. They have no hope, and, therefore, they have no fear. They are just down and out. All the uglymisery of all the ages is collected here in essence, and from it theatmosphere is charged; an atmosphere more horrible than any that I know:worse than that of Chinatown, worse than that of Shadwell. These aremerely insidious and menacing, but Duval Street is painful. 

It was here that I had the nearest approach to an adventure that I haveever had in London. I was sitting in the common kitchen of one of thehouses which was conspicuously labelled on its outer white-washed lamp--

 GOOD BEDS FOR MEN ONLY FOURPENCE

The notice, however, was but the usual farcical compliance with the lawwhich nobody regards and which nobody executes. Women were there inplenty--mostly old, unkempt women, wearing but a bodice and skirt andboots. The kitchen was a bare, blue-washed apartment, the floor sanded, with a long wooden table and two or three wooden forms. A generous fireroared up a wide chimney. The air was thick with fumes of pipes that hadbeen replenished with "old soldiers" from West End gutters. Suddenly agirl came in with an old man. I looked at her with some interest becauseshe was young, with copper-coloured hair that strayed about her facewith all the profusion of an autumn sunset. She was the only youthfulthing in the place, bar myself. I looked at her with rather excitedinterest because she was very drunk. She called the old man Dad. A fewof the men greeted him. One or two nodded to the girl. "'Lo, Luba. Binon the randy?" The women looked at her, not curiously, or withcompassion or disgust, but cursorily. I fancied, from certain incipientmovements, that she was about to be violently bilious; but she wasn't. We were sitting in silence when she came in. The silence continued. Nobody moved, nobody offered to make way. Dad swore at a huge scrofuloustramp, and kneed him a little aside from the fire. The tramp slippedfrom the edge of the form, but made no rebuke. Dad sat down and leftLuba to herself. She swayed perilously for a moment, and then floppedweakly to the form on which I sat. The man I was with leaned across me. 

"'Ad a rough time in the box, Luba?"

Luba nodded feebly. Her mouth sagged open; her eyes drooped; her headrolled. 

"I 'eard abaht it, " he went on. "Hunky Bottles see a _Star_ wi' yourpickcher in. And the old man's questions. Put you through it, din' 'e?"

Again Luba nodded. The next moment she seemed to repent the nod, for sheflared up and snapped: "Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, cancher? Giveany one the fair pip, you do. Ain't I answered enough damsilly questionsfrom ev'body without you? Oo's got a fag?"

I had, so I gave her one. She fumbled with it, trying to light it with amatch held about three inches from it. Finally, I lit it for her, andshe seemed to see me for the first time. She looked at me, at onceshiftily and sharply. Her eyes narrowed. Suspicion leaped into her face, and she seemed to shrink into herself like a tortoise into its shell. "Oo's 'e?" she demanded of my mate. 

"'E's all right. Oner the boys. Chuck knows 'im. "

Then the match burnt her fingers, and she swore weak explosive oaths, filthier than any I have heard from a bookmaker. She lisped, and therewas a suggestion in her accent of East Prussia or Western Russia. Herface was permanently reddened by alcohol. The skin was coarse, almostscaly, and her whole person sagged abominably. She wore no corsets, buther green frock was of an artful shade to match her brassy hair. Her hatwas new and jaunty and challenging. 

"Tell you what, " she said, turning from me, and seeming to wake up;"tell you what I'd like to do to that old counsel. I'd like to----" Andhere she poured forth a string of suggestions so disgusting that Icannot even convey them by euphemism. Her mouth was a sewer. The airabout us stunk with her talk. When she had finished, my mate againleaned across me, and asked in a hollow whisper, like the friction ofsand-paper--

"'Ere--Luba--tell us. Why d'you go back on Billie, eh?"

Luba made an expressive gesture with her fingers in his face, and thatwas the only answer he received; for she suddenly noticed me again, and, without another word, she dipped her hand to her bosom and pulled out anaked knife of the bowie pattern and twisted it under my nose. With thenervous instinct of the moment, I dodged back; but it followed me. 

"No monkey-tricks with me, dear! See? Else you'll know what. See?"

I was turning to my friend, in an appeal for intervention, when, quiteas suddenly as the knife was drawn, it disappeared, for Lubaoverbalanced because of the gin that was in her, and slipped from theform. Between us, we picked her up, replaced her, and tucked the knifeinto its sheath. Whereupon she at once got up, and said she was off. Forsome reason she went through an obscure ritual of solemnly pulling myear and slapping my face. Then she slithered across the room, fell upthe stair into the passage, and disappeared into the caverns of gloombeyond the door. When she had gone, some one said, "Daddy--Luba's gone!"

Daddy leaped from the form, snarled something inarticulate, fell up thesame stair, and went babbling and yelling after Luba. Some one came andshoved a fuzzy head through the door, asking lazily, "Whassup?" "Luba'sgone. " "Oh!"

I wondered vaguely if it was a nightmare; if I had gone mad; or if otherpeople had gone mad. I don't know now what it all meant. I only knowthat the girl was the Crown's principal witness in a now notoriousmurder case. My ear still burns. 

A CHARITABLE NIGHT

EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH

_POOR_

 _From jail he sought her, and he found A darkened house, a darkened street, A shrilly sky that screamed of sleet, And from The Lane quick gusts of sound. _

 _He mocked at life that men call sweet. He went and wiped it out in beer-- "Well, dammit, why should I stick here, By a dark house in a dark street?"_

 _For he and his but serve defeat; For kings they gather gems and gold, And life for them, when all is told, Is a dark house in a dark street. _

A CHARITABLE NIGHT

EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH

Charity . . . The most nauseous of the virtues, the practice of whichdegrades both giver and receiver. The practice of Charity brings youinto the limelight; it elevates you to friendship with the Almighty; youfeel that you are a colleague of the Saviour. It springs from Pity, themost unclean of all human emotions. It is not akin to love; it is akinto contempt. To be pitied is to be in the last stages of spiritualdegradation. You cannot pity anything on your own level, for Pityimplies an assumption of superiority. You cannot be pitied by yourfriends and equals, only by your self-elected superiors. Let us see Pityat work in London. . . . 

As I lounged some miles east of Aldgate Pump, an old song of love andlovers and human kindliness was softly ringing in my head, and it stillhaunted me as I slid like a phantom into that low-lit causeway thatslinks from a crashing road to the dark wastes of waters beyond. At thefar end a brutal black building broke the sky-line. A few windows werethinly lit by gas. I climbed the stone steps, hollowed by many feet, andstood in the entrance-hall. 

Then, as it seemed from far away, I heard an insistent murmur, like thebreaking of distant surf. I gazed around and speculated. In the barebrick wall was a narrow, high door. With the instinct of the journalist, I opened it. The puzzle was explained. It was the Dining Hall of theMetropolitan Orphanage, and the children were at their seven o'clocksupper. From the cathedral-like calm of the vestibule, I passed into anatmosphere billowing with the flutter of some five hundred smalltongues. Under the pendant circles of gas-jets were ranged twelve long, narrow tables packed with children talking and eating with no sense ofany speed-limit. On the one side were boys in cruelly ugly brown suits, and on the other side, little girls from seven to fifteen in frocks ofsome dark material with a thin froth of lace at neck and wrists andcoarse, clean pinafores. Each table was attended by a matron, who servedout the dry bread and hot milk to the prefects, who carried the basinsup and down the tables as deftly as Mr. Paul Cinquevalli. Everywhere wasa prospect of raw faces and figures, which Charity had deliberately madeas uncomely as possible by clownish garb and simple toilet. The childrenate hungrily, and the place was full of the spirit of childhood, anadulterated spirit. The noise leaped and swelled on all sides in anexultant joy of itself, but if here and there a jet of jolly laughtershot from the stream, there were glances from the matrons. 

The hall was one of wide spaces, pierced at intervals by the mouths ofbleak, stark corridors. The air of it was limp and heavy with the smellof food. Polished beams ran below the roof, pretending to uphold it, andmassive columns of painted stone flung themselves aggressively here andthere, and thought they were supporting a small gallery. Outside a fullmoon shone, but it filtered through the cheap, half-toned glass of thewindows with a quality of pale lilac. Here and there a window of stainedglass stabbed the brick wall with passionate colour. The moralatmosphere suggested nut-foods and proteid values. 

At half-past seven a sharp bell rang, and with much rumbling andmanoeuvring of forms, the children stood stiffly up, faced round, and, as a shabby piano tinkled a melody, they sang grace, somewhat in thisfashion:--

 To Go doo give sus dailyb read Dour thankful song we raise-se, Sand prayth at he who send susf ood, Dwillf ill lour reart swithp raise, _Zaaaamen_. 

Then a wave of young faces rolled upward to the balcony, where stood agrey-headed, grey-bearded, spectacled figure. It was one of the honorarymanagers. The children stood to attention like birds before a snake. Onealmost expected to hear them sing "God bless the squire and hisrelations. . . . " The Gentleman was well-tailored, and apart from hishabiliments there was, in every line of his figure, that which suggestedsolidity, responsibility, and the substantial virtues. I have seen himat Committee meetings of various charitable enterprises; himself, duplicated again and again. One charitable worker is always exactly likethe other, allowing for differences of sex. They are of one type, withone manner, and--I feel sure--with one idea. I am certain that were youto ask twenty members of a Charity committee for opinions on aviation, Swedenborgism, the Royal Academy, and Little Tich, each would expressthe same views in the same words and with the same gestures. 

This gentleman was of the City class; he carried an air of sleekness. Clearly he was a worthy citizen, a man who had Got On, and had nowabandoned himself to this most odious of vices. And there he stood, in alilac light, splashed with voluptuous crimsons and purples, dispensingCharity to the little ones before him whose souls were of hills and thesea. He began to address them. It appeared that the Orphanage hadreceived, that very morning, forty more children; and he wished toobserve how unnecessary it was for him to say with what pleasure thishad been done. Many thousands of children now holding exalted positionsin banks and the Civil Service could look to him as to their father, inthe eighty or more years of the School's life, and he was proud to feelthat his efforts were producing such Fine Healthy Young Citizens. Thechildren knew--did they not?--that they had a Good Home, with lovingguardians who would give them the most careful training suited to theirposition in life. They were clothed, maintained, and drilled, asconcerned their bodies; and, as concerned their souls, they had thehabits of Industry and Frugality inculcated into them, and they wereguided in the paths of Religion and Virtue. They had good plain food, suited to their position in life, and healthy exercise in the way ofManly Sports and Ladylike Recreations. He quoted texts from theScriptures, about the sight of the Widow touching those chords whichvibrate sympathetically in all of us, and a lot of stuff about a Cup ofCold Water and These Little Ones. He exuded self-content. 

He went on to remark that the hazardous occupations of Modern Industryhad, by their many mischances, stripped innumerable families of theirheads, and reduced them to a condition of the most deplorable. Hedesired to remind them that the class to which they belonged was not theVery Poor of the gutters, but the Respectable Poor who would not stoopto receive the aid doled out by the State. No; they were not GutterChildren, but, at the same time, the training they received was not suchas to create any distaste among them for the humblest employments ofHonest Industry, suitable to their position in life. He redeemed theobjects interested in his exertions from the immoralities of the VeryPoor, while teaching them to respect their virtues, and to do their dutyin that station of life to which it had pleased God to call them. 

(The little objects seemed to appreciate this, for they applauded withsome spirit, on prompting from the matrons. )

He went on to suggest, with stodgy jocularity, that among them waspossibly a Prime Minister of 1955--think of Pitt--and perhaps a LordKitchener. He spoke in terms of the richest enthusiasm of the fosteringof the Manly Qualities and the military drill--such a Fine Thing for theLads; and he urged them to figure to themselves that, even if they didnot rise to great heights, they might still achieve greatness by doingtheir duty at office desk, or in factory, loom, or farmyard, and soadding to the lustre of their Native Land--a land, he would say, inwhich they had so great a part. 

(Here the children cheered, seemingly with no intent of irony. ) He addedthat, in his opinion, kind hearts were, if he might so put it, more thancoronets. 

The Gentleman smiled amiably. He nourished no tiny doubt that he wasdoing the right thing. He believed that Christ would be pleased with himfor turning out boys and girls of fourteen, half-educated, mentally andsocially, to spend their lives in dingy offices in dingy alleys of theCity. There was no humbug here; impossible for a moment to doubt hissincerity. He had a childlike faith in his Great Work. He was, as heannually insisted, with painful poverty of epithet, engaged inPhilanthropic Work, alleviating the Distresses of the Respectable Poorand ameliorating Social Conditions Generally. So he trained his childrenuntil he trained them into desk or farm machines; trained them so thattheir souls were starved, driven in on themselves, and there stifled, and at last eaten away by the canker of their murky routine. 

I looked at those children as they stood before me. I looked at theirbright, clear faces, their eyes wonder-wide, their clean brows alert forknowledge, hungry for life and its beauty. Despite their hideousclothes, they were the poetry of the world: all that is young and freshand lovely. Then I thought of them five years hence, their minds lardedwith a Sound Commercial Education, tramping the streets of the City fromnine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening, living inan atmosphere of intellectual vacuity, their ardent temperaments fled, their souls no longer desiring beauty. I felt a little sick. 

But The Gentleman. . . . The Gentleman stood there in a lilac light, andtook unction unto himself. He smiled benignly, a smile of sincerepleasure. Then he called the children to attention while he read tothem a prayer of St. Chrysostom, which he thought most suitable totheir position in life. A ring of gas-jets above his head hovered likean aureole. 

 * * * * *

I do wish that something could somehow be done to restrain theBenevolent. We are so fond, as a nation, of patronizing that if we havenothing immediately at hand to patronize, we must needs go out into thehighways and hedges and bring in anything we can find, any old thing, solong as we can patronize it. I have often thought of starting a League(I believe it would be immensely popular) for The Suppression of SocialService. The fussy, incompetent men and women who thrust themselvesforward for that work are usually the last people who should rightlymeddle with it. They either perform it from a sense of duty, or whatthey themselves call The Social Conscience (the most nauseous kind ofbenevolence), or they play with it because it is Something To Do. Alwaystheir work is discounted by personal vanity. I like the Fabians: theyare funny without being vulgar. But these Social Servants and theirCrusades for Pure and Holy Living Among Work-Girls are merely fatuousand vulgar when they are not deliberately insulting. Can you conceive amore bitter mind than that which calls a girl of the streets a FallenSister? Yet that is what these people have done; they have labelled ahouse with the device of The Midnight Crusade for the Reclamation of ourFallen Sisters; and they expect self-respecting girls of that professionto enter it. . . . 

I once attended one of these shows in a North London slum. The peopleresponsible for it have the impudence to send women-scouts to the WestEnd thoroughfares at eleven o'clock every night, there to interfere withthese girls, to thrust their attentions upon them, and, if possible, lure them away to a service of song--Brief, Bright, and Brotherly. Itwas a bitter place in a narrow street. The street was gay and loud withhumanity, only at its centre was a dark and forbidding door, reticentand inhuman. There was no sign of good-fellowship here; no warm touch ofthe flesh. It was as brutal as justice; it seemed to have builded itselfon that most horrible of all texts: "_Be just before you are generous. _"

I went in at an early hour, about half-past ten, and only two victimshad been secured. The place stunk of _The Church Times_ and practicalChristianity. In the main room was a thin fire, as skimpy as though ithad been lit by a spinster, as, I suppose, it had. There was a bare dealtable. The seating accommodation was cane chairs, which I hate; theyalways remind me of the Band of Hope classes I was compelled to attendas a child. They suggest something stale and cheesy, something assqualid as the charity they serve. On a corner table was a battered urnand a number of earthenware cups, with many plates of thick, greasybread-and-butter; just the right fare to offer a girl who has put awayseveral benedictines and brandies. The room chilled me. Place, people, appointments, even the name--Midnight Crusade for the Reclamation of ourFallen Sisters--smacked of everything that is most ugly. Smugness andsuper-piety were in the place. The women--I mean, ladies--who manage theplace, were the kind of women I have seen at the Palace when Gaby is on. (For you will note that Gaby does not attract the men; it is not theywho pack the Palace nightly to see her powder her legs and bosom. Theymay be there, but most of them are at the bar. If you look at the circleand stalls, they are full of elderly, hard women, with dominanteyebrows, leering through the undressing process, and moistening theirlips as Gaby appears in her semi-nakedness. )

The walls of the big bedroom were adorned with florid texts, tastefullyframed. It was a room of many beds, each enclosed in a cubicle. The bedswere hard, covered with coarse sheets. If I were a Fallen Brother, Ihardly think they would have tempted me from a life of ease. And therewere RULES. . . . Oh, how I loathe RULES! I loathed them as a child atschool. I loathed drill, and I loathed compulsory games, and I loathedall laws that were made without purpose. There were long printed listsof Rules in this place, framed, and hung in each room. You can neverbelieve how many things a Fallen Sister may not do. Certain rules are, of course, essential; but the pedagogic mind, once started onlaw-making, can never stop; and it is usually the pedagogic type ofmind, with the lust for correction, that goes in for Charity. Why maynot the girls talk in certain rooms? Why may they not read anything butthe books provided? Why may they not talk in bed? Why must they foldtheir bed-clothes in such-and-such an exact way? Why must they notdescend from the bed-room as and when they are dressed? Why must theylet the Superior read their letters? And why, oh, why are these placesrun by white-faced men and elderly, hard women?

I have written, I fear, rather flippantly on this topic; but that isonly because I dare not trust myself to be serious. I realize as much asany one that the life is a shameful life, and all that sort of thing;but I boil with indignation at the hundred shamefulnesses which thesecharity-mongers heap upon defenceless girls who, in a weak moment, havesought their protection. If you know anything about the matter, you willknow that these girls have in their little souls an almost savage flameof self-respect which burns with splendour before the bleak, miserableflame of Organized Charity. If I spoke my mind on the subject, this pagewould blaze with fury . . . And you would smile. 

 * * * * *

But amid all this welter of misdirected endeavour, there is just oneorganized charity for which I should like to say a word; and that is TheSalvation Army. I do not refer to its religious activities so much as toits social work as represented in the excellent Shelters which havebeen opened in various districts. There is one in Whitechapel Road, which is the identical building where General Booth first started asmall weekly mission service which was afterwards known all over theworld as The Salvation Army. There is one in Hoxton. There is one--alarge one--in Blackfriars Road. And there are others wherever they maybe most needed. 

The doors open at five o'clock every evening. The Shelter, mark you, isnot precisely a Charity. The men have to pay. Here is shown theexcellent understanding of the psychology of the people which theUniversity Socialist misses. You cannot get hold of people by offeringthem something for nothing; but you can get hold of them by tens ofthousands by offering them something good at a low price. For ahalfpenny the Salvation Army offers them tea, coffee, cocoa, or soup, with bread-and-butter, cake, or pudding. All this food is cooked andprepared at the Islington headquarters, and the great furnaces in thekitchens of the Shelters are roaring night and day for the purpose ofwarming-up the food, heating the Shelter, and serving the drying-rooms, where the men can hang their wet clothes. 

A spotlessly clean bed is offered for threepence a night, which includesuse of bathroom, lavatory, and washhouse. The washhouse is in very greatdemand on wet nights by those who have been working out of doors, and bythose who wish to wash their underclothes, etc. 

In addition to this, the men have the service of the Army orderlies, inattention at table and in "calling" in the morning. The staff is at workall night, either attending new-comers or going round with the various"calls, " which, as some of the guests are market porters, are forunearthly hours, such as half-past three or four o'clock. The Sheltersare patronized by many "regulars"--flower-sellers, pedlars, CoventGarden or Billingsgate odd men, etc. --who lodge with them by the week, sometimes by the year. Lights are officially out at half-past nine, butof course the orderly is on duty at the door until eight o'clock thefollowing morning, and no stranger who wants food and bed is refused. Heis asked for the threepence and for the halfpenny for his food, but ifhe cannot produce these he has but to ask for the Brigadier, and, if heis a genuine case, he is at once taken in. 

Every Saturday night at half-past eleven certain of the orderlies, supplied with tickets, go out, and to any hungry, homeless wanderer theygive a ticket with directions to the Shelter. These Saturday nighttickets entitle him, if he chooses to accept them, to bath, breakfast, bed, and the Sunday service. 

Further, the Shelter acts as employment agency, and, once having foundtheir man, the first step towards helping him is to awaken in him thelatent sense of responsibility. The quickest way is to find him work, and this they do; and once their efforts show results, they never losesight of him. 

Many heartbreaking cases go by the orderly's box at the door, and Iwould like to set some of those young Oxford philanthropists who writepamphlets or articles in _The New Age_ on social subjects by the doorfor a night. I think they would learn a lot of things they never knewbefore. Often, at two or three o'clock in the morning, the scouts willbring in a bundle of rain-sodden rags that hardly looks as if it couldever have been a man. How can you deal scientifically or religiouslywith that?

You can't. But the rank and file of The Salvation Army, with its almostuncanny knowledge of men, has found a better, happier way. I have spentmany nights in various of their Shelters, and I should like to put onrecord the fine spirit which I have found prevailing there. It is aspirit of camaraderie. In other charitable institutions you will findtimidity, the cowed manner, sometimes symptoms of actual fear. But neverat the Salvation Army. There every new-comer is a pal, until he isproved to be unworthy of that name. There is no suspicion, nounderhanded questioning, no brow-beating: things which I have neverfound absent from any other organized charity. 

The Salvation Army method is food, warmth, mateyness; and their answerto their critics, and their reward, is the sturdy, respectable artisanwho comes along a few months later to shake hands with them and give hisown services in helping them in their work. 

 * * * * *

Far away West, through the exultant glamour of theatre and restaurantLondon, through the solid, melancholic greys of Bayswater, you find alittle warm corner called Shepherd's Bush. You find also Notting Dale, where the bad burglars live, but we will talk of that in anotherchapter. Back of Shepherd's Bush is a glorious slum, madly lit, uncouth, and entirely wonderful. 

To Shepherd's Bush I went one evening. I went to fairyland. I went totell stories and to lead music-hall choruses. No; not at the Shepherd'sBush Empire, but at a dirty little corrugated hall in a locked byway. Some time ago, the usual charitably minded person, finding time hangheavy on her hands, or having some private grief which she desired toforget in bustle and activity, started a movement for giving childrenhappy evenings. I have not been to one of the centres, and I am sure Ishould not like to go. I dislike seeing children disciplined in theirplay. Children do not need to be taught to play. Games which are notspontaneous are as much a task as enforced lessons. I have been a childmyself. The people who run charities, I think, never have been. . . . However. . . . 

This Shepherd's Bush enterprise was an entirely private affair. The ideawas based on the original inception, and much improved. At theseorganized meetings the children are forced to go through antics which, three hundred years ago, were a perfectly natural expression of the joyof life. These antics were called morris dances; they were mad, vulgar, joyous abandonment to the mood of the moment; just as the dancesperformed by little gutter-arabs and factory-girls around street organsare an abandonment to the mood of to-day's moment. But the elderlyspinsters have found that what was vulgar three hundred years ago isartistic to-day; or if it isn't they will make it so. Why on earth achild should have to dance round a maypole just because children dancedround a maypole centuries ago, I cannot understand. To-day, the morrisdance is completely self-conscious, stiff, and ugly. The self-developeddance of the little girl at the organ is a thing of beauty, because itis a quite definite expression of something which the child feels; itfollows no convention, it changes measure at fancy, it regards nothingbut its own rapture. . . . The morris dance isn't. 

So, at the hall to which I went, the children were allowed to playexactly as and when they liked. Any child could come from anywhere, andbring other children. There was a piano, and some one was always inattendance to play whatever might be required by the children. If theywanted "The Cubanola Glide, " or "Down in Jungle-Town, " or "In theShadows, " they got it, or anything else they might choose. Toys of allkinds were on hand--dolls, engines, railways, dolls'-houses, littlecooking-stoves, brick puzzles, regiments of soldiers, picture-books, and, indeed, everything that a child could think of. 

When I arrived I tripped over the threshold of the narrow entrance, andfell into a warmly lighted room, where the meetings of some localCommittee were usually held. All chairs had been cleared to the wall, and the large central space was littered with troops of glad girls andtoddlers from the stark streets around. Instead of teaching the childrento play, the management here set the children to play by themselves andset elder children to attend them. Great was the fun. Great was thenoise. On a little dais at the end, coffee and sweet cakes were going, but there was no rush. When the kiddies wanted a cake they went up andasked for it; but for the most part they were immersed in that subdued, serious excitement which means that games are really being enjoyed. Allof the attendants were girls of 12 or 13, of that sweet age betweenchildhood and flapperhood, when girls are at their loveliest, with shortfrocks that dance at every delicate step, and with unconcealed gloriesof hair golden or dusky; all morning light and melody and fearlessness, not yet realizing that they are women. Many of them, shabby and underfedas they were, were really lovely girls, their beauty shining throughtheir rags with an almost religious radiance, as to move you to prayerand tears. Their gentle ways with the baby-children were a joy to watch. One group was working a model railway. In another a littletwelve-year-old girl was nursing two tinies, and had a cluster of othersat her feet while she read "Jack and the Beanstalk" from a luridlyillustrated rag-book. Another little girl was figuring certain steps ofa dance of her own invention, each step being gravely followed by twoyoungsters who could scarcely walk. 

Then the wonderful woman--a local woman, she bought a small shop yearsago, and now owns a blazing rank of Stores--who financed the play-roomwent to the piano, crashed a few chords, and instantly every head, golden or brown or dark, was lifted to us. My hostess said something--aword of invitation--and, as though it were a signal, the crowd leapedup, and rushed, tumbled, or toddled toward us. 

"What about a song?" cried the lady. 

"Ooo-er . . . Rather!"

"What'll we have, then?"

The shrill babel half-stunned me. No two called for the same thing. Ifmy hearing were correct, they wanted every popular song of the last tenyears. However, we compromised, for a start, on "Jungle-Town, " and, though I felt extremely nervous of such an audience, I gave it them, and then invited them for the second chorus. 

What a chorus! Even the babies, who knew nothing of the words and couldnot have spoken them if they had, seemed to know the tune, and they letit out in every possible key. That song went with a bang, and I had norest for at least half an hour. We managed to get them to write theirfavourites on slips of paper, and I took them in rotation, the symphonybeing in every case interrupted by long-drawn groans from thedisappointed ones, and shrieks of glee from those who had chosen it. "Onthe Mississippi" was the winner of the evening; it was encored fivetimes; and a hot second was "I do Kinder Feel I'm in Love. "

When their demands had been exhausted I had a rest, and some coffee, while Iris, a wicked little girl of eleven, told the story of Joan ofArc. Other girls followed her, each telling her own pet story. Theirskill in this direction was a thing to marvel at. The audience was ajoy, with half-raised heads, wide eyes, open mouths, every nerve of themhanging on the reciter's words. Indeed, I, too, found that one of thetale-tellers had "got" me with her story of Andersen's "Little MatchGirl. "

On their asking another song, I told them the "creepy-creepy" story ofMark Twain's--the one about "Who's got my Golden Arm, " where, if youhave worked it up properly, you get a shriek of horror on the last word. I got it. A shriek of horror? It nearly pierced the drums of the ear. Then they all huddled together in a big bunch, each embracing the other, and begged me to tell it again; so, while they clung tightly togetherfor safety, I told it again, but instead of a shriek I got a hystericallaugh which lasted for nearly a minute before they disentangledthemselves. Then I gave them Charles Pond's recital about thedog-hospital, and the famous "Cohen at the Telephone. "

At half-past nine they were collected into bunches, and dispatched homeunder the guidance of the bigger girls. They paused at the door toscream messages to me, to chant bits of the choruses we had sung, todance with loud, defiant feet on the hollow floor, and one little girlgave me a pearl button from her pinafore as a keepsake, and hoped Iwould come again. Then she kissed me Good-Night, and ran off amid jeersfrom the boys. 

At ten o'clock I helped my hostess in the clearing away of the cakes andcoffee-cups, and, half an hour later we were out in the clamorous wildsof Shepherd's Bush. 

A FRENCH NIGHT

OLD COMPTON STREET

_OLD COMPTON STREET_

 _Through London rain her people flow, And Pleasure trafficks to and fro. A gemmy splendour fills the town, And robes her in a spangled gown Through which no sorry wound may show. _

 _But with the dusk my fancies go To that grey street I used to know, Where Love once brought his heavy crown Through London rain!_

 _And ever, when the day is low, And stealthy clouds the night forethrow, I quest these ways of dear renown, And pray, while Hope in tears I drown, That once again her face may glow, Through London rain!_

A FRENCH NIGHT

OLD COMPTON STREET

Step aside from the jostle and clamour of Oxford Street into SohoSquare, and you are back in the eighteenth century and as lonely as agood man in Chicago. Cross the Square, cut through Greek Street or DeanStreet, and you are in--Paris, amid the clang, the gesture, and thealert nonchalance of metropolitan France. 

Soho--magic syllables! For when the respectable Londoner wants to feeldevilish he goes to Soho, where every street is a song. He walks throughOld Compton Street, and, instinctively, he swaggers; he is abroad; he isa dog. He comes up from Surbiton or Norwood or Golder's Green, and hedines cheaply at one of the hundred little restaurants, and returns homewith the air and the sensation of one who has travelled, and has peepedinto places that are not . . . Quite . . . You know. 

Soho exists only to feed the drab suburban population of London on thespree. That artificial atmosphere of Montmartre, those little touches ofa false Bohemia are all cunningly spread from the brains of therestaurateurs as a net to catch the young bank clerk and the youngFabian girl. Indeed, one establishment has overplayed the game to theextent of renaming itself "The Bohemia. " The result is that one dare notgo there for fear of dining amid the minor clergy and the Fabians andthe girl-typists. It is a little pitiable to make a tour of the cafésand watch the Londoner trying to be Bohemian. There has been, of course, for the last few years, a growing disregard, among all classes, for theheavier conventionalities; but this determined Bohemianism is a mistake. The Englishman can no more be trifling and light-hearted in the Gallicmanner than a Polar bear can dance the _maxixe brésilienne_ in thejungle. If you have ever visited those melancholy places, the nightclubs and cabarets, which had a boom a year or two ago, you willappreciate the immense effort that devilry demands from him. Thoseplaces were the last word in dullness. I have been at Hampsteadtea-parties which gave you a little more of the joy of living. I havewatched the nuts and the girls, and what have I seen? Boredom. Heavyeyes, nodding heads, a worn-out face, saying with determination, "I WILLbe gay!" Perhaps you have seen the pictures of those luxuriouslyupholstered and appointed establishments: music, gaiety, sparkle, finedresses, costume songs, tangos, smart conversation and faces, and allthe rest of it. But the real thing. . . . Imagine a lot of dishevelledgirls pouring into a stuffy room after the theatre, looking alreadyfatigued, but bracing themselves to dance and eat and drink and talkuntil--as I have seen them--they fall asleep over the tables, and hatethe boy who brought them there. 

Practically the sole purpose of the place was to fill some one'spockets, for, as the patrons were playing at being frightful dogs, themanagement knew that they could do as they liked with the tariff. Theboys wouldn't go to night-clubs if they were not spendthrifts. Result:whisky-and-soda, seven-and-sixpence; cup of coffee, half a crown. Andnobody ever had the pluck to ask for change out of a sovereign. 

Now, I love my Cockneys, heart and soul. And, just because I love themso much, I do wish to goodness they wouldn't be Bohemian; I do wish togoodness they would keep out of Soho cafés. They only come in quest of aBohemianism which isn't there. They can get much better food at home, orthey can afford to get a really good meal at an English hotel. I wishthey would leave Soho alone for the people like myself who feed therebecause it is cheap, and because the waiters will give us credit. 

"Garcong, " cried the diner whose food was underdone, "these sausages nesont pas fait!"

If the Cockney goes on like this, he will spoil Soho, and he will losehis own delightful individuality and idiosyncrasy. 

But, apart from the invasion of Soho by the girl-clerk and thebook-keeper, one cannot but love it. I love it because, in my early daysof scant feeding, it was the one spot in London where I could gorge torepletion for a shilling. There was a little place in Wardour Street, the Franco-Suisse--it is still there--whose shilling table d'hôte was amarvel: And I always had my bob's worth, I can assure you; for thosewere the days when one went hungry all day in order to buy concerttickets. Indeed, there were occasions when the breadbasket was removedfrom my table, so savage was the raid I made upon it. 

There, one night a week, we feasted gloriously. We revelled. We read the_Gaulois_ and _Gil Blas_ and papers of a friskier tone. There stillexists a Servian café where all manner of inflammatory organs ofNihilism may be read, and where heavy-bearded men--Anarchists, you hope, but piano-builders, you fear--would sit for three hours over theirdinner Talking, _Talking_, TALKING. Then for another hour they wouldplay backgammon, and at last roll out, blasphemously, to the darkenedstreet, and so Home to those mysterious lodgings about Broad Street andPulteney Street. 

How the kitchens manage to do those shilling table d'hôtes is a mysterywhich I have never solved, though I have visited "below" on one or twooccasions and talked with the chefs. There are about a dozen cafés nowwhich, for the Homeric shilling, give you four courses, bread _ad lib_, and coffee to follow. And it is good; it is a refection for thegods--certain selected gods. 

You stroll into the little gaslit room (enamelled in white anddecorated with tables set in the simplest fashion, yet clean andsufficient) as though you are dropping in at the Savoy or Dieudonné's. It is rhomboidal in shape, with many angles, as though perspective hadsuddenly gone mad. Each table is set with a spoon, a knife, a fork, aserviette, a basket of French bread, and a jar of French mustard. If youare in spendthrift mood, you may send the boy for a bottle of _vinordinaire_, which costs tenpence; on more sober occasions you send himfor beer. 

There is no menu on the table; the waiter or, more usually, in thesesmaller places, the waitress explains things to you as you go along. Each course carries two dishes, _au choix_. There are no _horsd'oeuvres_; you dash gaily into the soup. The tureen is brought to thetable, and you have as many goes as you please. Hot water, flavouredwith potato and garnished with a yard of bread, makes an excellentlining for a hollow stomach. This is followed by omelette or fish. Ofthe two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omeletteis thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recallsBill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbidhen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, andmustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as muchfor the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhapsVienna steak, or _vol-au-vent_. The next item is Camembert or fruit, andcoffee concludes the display. 

Dining in these places is not a matter of subdued murmurs, ofconversation in dulcet tones, or soft strains from the band. Rather youseem to dine in a menagerie. It is a bombardment more than a meal. Theair buckles and cracks with noise. The first outbreak of hostilitiescomes from the counter at the entry of the first guest. The moment he isseated the waitress screams, "Un potage--un!" The large Monsieur, theproprietor, at the counter, bellows down the tube, "Un POTAGE--Un!"Away in subterranean regions an ear catches it, and a distant voicechants "_Potage_!" And then from the far reaches of the kitchen you heara smothered tenor, as coming from the throat of one drowned in thesoup-kettle, "P o t a g e!" As the customers crowd in the din increases. Everywhere there is noise; as a result the customers must shout theirconversation. As the volume of conversation increases the counter, finding itself hard-pressed, brings up its heavy artillery. 

"Vol-au-vent!" sings the waitress. "_Vol-au-vent!_" chants the counterin a bass as heavy and with as wide a range as Chaliapine's. "VOL-AU-VENT!" roars the kitchen with the despair of tears in the voice;and "V o l-a u-v e n t!" wails the lost soul beyond the Styx. By half-pastseven it is no longer a restaurant; it is no longer a dinner that isbeing served. It is a grand opera that is in progress. The vocalists, "finding" themselves towards the end of the first act, warm up to thesecond, and each develops an individuality. I have often let my Viennasteak get cold while listening and trying to distinguish between thekitchen lift-man and the cook. Lift-man is usually a light and agreeablebaritone, while the cook has mostly a falsetto, with a really excitingregister. This grand opera idea affects, in turn, the waitresses. To thefirst-comers they are casual and chatty; but towards seven o'clock thereis a subtle change. They become tragic. They are as the children ofdestiny. There is that Italianate sob in the voice as they demand_Poulet roti au salade_! as who should cry, "Ah, fors è lui!" or "Inquesta tomba. . . . " They do not serve you. They assault you with soup oromelette. They make a grand pass above your head, and fling knife andfork before you. They collide with themselves and each other, and thereare recriminations and reprisals. They quarrel, apparently, to thedeath, while M'sieu and Madame look on, passive spectators of theeternal drama. The air boils. The blood of the diners begins to boil, too, for they wave napkins and sticks of bread, and they bellow andscream defiance at one another. They draw the attention of the waitressto the fact that there is no salt on the table; what they seem to betelling her is that the destinies of France are in the balance, theenemy is at the gates, and that she must deliver herself as hostage orsuffer dreadful deaths. Everything, in fact, boils, except the soup andthe coffee; and at last, glad to escape, you toss your shilling on thetable and tumble out, followed by a yearning cry of "Une salade--une!"

Even then your entertainment has not ceased with the passing of theshilling. For there are now numerous coffee-bars in Old Compton Streetwhere for a penny you may lounge at the counter and get an excellent cupof black coffee, and listen to the electric piano, splurging its cheapgaiety on the night, or to the newsmen yelling "_Journaux de Paris_!" or"_Dernière Heure_!" There are "The Chat Noir, " "The Café Leon, " and "TheCafé Bar Conte"; also there is "The Suisse, " where you may get "rekerky"liqueurs at threepence a time, and there is a Japanese café in EdwardStreet. 

Of course there are numbers of places in Soho where you may dine morelavishly and expensively, and where you will find a band and a carefulwine-list, such as Maxim's, The Coventry, The Florence, and Kettner's. Here you do not escape for a shilling, or anything like it. Maxim's doesan excellent half-crown dinner, and so, too, does The Rendezvous. Theothers range from three shillings to five shillings; and as the price ofthe meal increases so do the prices on the wine-lists increase, thoughyou drink the same wine in each establishment. 

The atmosphere of the cheaper places is, however, distinctly morecompanionable than that of these others. In the latter you have Surbitonand Streatham, anxious to display its small stock of evening frocks anddress suits; very proper, very conscious of itself, very proud of havingbroken away from parental tradition. But in the smaller places, whichare supported by a regular clientèle of the French clerks, workmen, andwarehouse porters who are employed in and about Oxford Street, the senseof camaraderie and naturalness is very strong. These people are notdoing anything extraordinary. They are just having dinner, and they aregay and _insouciant_ about it, as they are about everything exceptfrivolity. It is not exciting for them to dine on five courses insteadof on roast mutton and vegetables and milk-pudding. It is acommon-place. For that is the curious thing about the foreigner:wherever he wanders he takes his country with him. Englishmen get intoqueer corners of the world, and adapt themselves to local customs, fitthemselves into local landscapes. Not so the Continental. Let him go toLondon, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and he will take France, orGermany, or Italy, or Russia with him. Here in this little square mileof London is France: French shops, French comestibles, French papers, French books, French pictures, French hardware, and French restaurantsand manners. In old Compton Street he is as much in France as if he werein the rue Chaussée d'Antin. I met some time since a grey littleFrenchman who is first fiddle at a hall near Piccadilly Circus. He hasnever been out of France. Years and years ago he came from Paris, andwent to friends in Wardour Street. There he worked for some time in aFrench music warehouse; and, when that failed, he was taken on in asmall theatre near Shaftesbury Avenue. Thence, at fifty-two, he driftedinto this music-hall orchestra, of which he is now leader. Yet duringthe whole time he has been with us he has never visited London. HisLondon life has been limited to that square mile of short, briskstreets, Soho. If he crossed Piccadilly Circus, he would be lost, poordear!

"Ah!" he sighs. "France . . . Yes . . . Paris. Yes. " For he lives only indreams of the real Paris. He hopes soon to return there. He hoped soonto return there thirty years ago. He hates his work. He does not wantto play the music of London, but the music of Paris. If he must play inLondon, he would choose to play in Covent Garden orchestra, where hisfancy would have full freedom. When he says Music, he means Massenet, Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo. He plays Wagner with but littleinterest. He plays Viennese opera with a positive snort. Ragtime--well, I do not think he is conscious of playing it; he fiddles mechanicallyfor that. But when, by a rare chance, the bill contains an excerpt fromPagliacci, La Bohème, or Butterfly, then he lives. He cares nothing forthe twilight muse of your intellectual moderns--Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Scriabine, and such. For him music is melody, melody, melody--laughter, quick tears, and the graceful surface of things; movement and festalcolour. 

He seldom rises before noon--unless rehearsals compel--and then, after acoffee, he wanders forth, smoking the cigarette of Algeria, and humming, always humming, the music that is being hummed in Paris. He ispicturesque, in his own way--shabby, but artistically shabby. At oneo'clock you will see him in "The Dieppe, " taking their shilling tabled'hôte _déjeuner_, with a half-bottle of _vin ordinaire_; and he willsit over the coffee perhaps until three o'clock, murmuring the luscious, facile phrases of Massenet. 

His great friend is the Irishman who plays the drum, for they have thisin common: they are both exiles. They are both "saving up" to returnhome. They have both been "saving up" for the last twenty years. In eachcase there is a girl. . . . Or there was a girl twenty years ago. She iswaiting for them--one in Paris, and the other in Wicklow. At least, sothey believe. Sometimes, though, I think they must doubt; for I have metthem together in the Hotel Suisse putting absinthes away carelessly, hopelessly; and a man does not play with absinthe when a girl is waitingfor him. 

AN ITALIAN NIGHT

CLERKENWELL

_CLERKENWELL_

 _Deep in the town of window smiles-- You shall not find it, though you seek; But over many bricky miles It draws me through the wearing week. Its panes are dim, its curtains grey, It shows no heartsome shine at dusk; For gas is dear, and factory pay Makes small display: On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay!_

 _A loud saloon flings golden light Athwart the wet and greasy way, Where, every happy Sunday night, We meet in mood of holiday. She wears a dress of claret glow That's thinly frothed with bead and lace. She buys this lace in Jasmine Row, A spot, you know, Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go. _

 _I love the shops that flare and lurk In the big street whose lamps are gems, For there she stops when off to work To covet silks and diadems. At evenings, too, the organ plays "My Hero" or in "Dixie Land"; And in the odoured purple haze, Where naphthas blaze, The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise. _

AN ITALIAN NIGHT

CLERKENWELL

For some obscure reason Saffron Hill is always associated in the publicmind with Little Italy. Why, I do not know. It isn't and never wasItalian. There is not a trace of anything the least Italian about it. There isn't a shop or a home in the whole length of it. It is just asegment of the City, E. C. --a straggling street of flat-faced warehousesand printing-works; high, impassive walls; gaunt, sombre, and dumb; notone sound or spark of life to be heard or seen anywhere. Yet that iswhat the unknowing think of when they think of the Italian quarter. 

The true, warm heart of Italy in London is Eyre Street Hill, which slipsshyly out of one of the romantic streets of London--Clerkenwell Road. There is something very taking about Clerkenwell Road, something snugand cheering. It is full, clustering, and alive. Here is the ItalianChurch. Here is St. John's Gate, where Goldsmith and Isaac Walton and ahost of other delightful fellows lived. This gatehouse is now all thatremains of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem around which the littlevillage of Clerkenwell developed. Very near, too, are Cloth Fair, Bartholomew's Close, Smithfield, and a hundred other echoes of pasttimes. And here--most exciting of all--the redoubtable Mr. Heinz (famousfor his 57 Varieties) has his warehouse. 

There is a waywardness about Clerkenwell Road. It never seems quite toknow where it shall go. It drifts, winds, rises, drops, debouches. Youclimb its length, and, at the top, you see a wide open space, which isMount Pleasant, and you think you have reached its end; but youhaven't. There is much more to come. It doesn't stop until it reachesGray's Inn Road, and then it stops sharply, unexpectedly. But theromance of the place lies not only in its past; there is an immediateromance, for which you must turn into its byways. Here live all thosebronzed street-merchants who carry delightful things to ourdoors--ice-cream, roast chestnuts, roast potatoes, chopped wood, andsalt. In unsuspected warehouses here you may purchase wonderful toysthat you never saw in any other shops. You may buy a barrow and a stoveand a complete apparatus for roasting potatoes and chestnuts, includinga natty little poker for raking out the cinders. You may buy a gaudilydecorated barrow and freezing-plant for the manufacture and sale ofice-cream. Or--and as soon as I have the money this is what I am goingto buy in Clerkenwell--you may buy a real street organ--a hundred ofthem, if you wish. While the main road and the side streets on the southare given up to the watch and clock-makers, the opposite side-streetsare Italian soil. Here are large warehouses where the poor Italian mayhire an organ for the day, or week, or month. A rehearsal at one ofthese show-rooms is a deafening affair; it is just like Naples on aSunday morning. As the organs come over from Italy, they are "triedout, " and any flaws are immediately detected by the expert ear. In thesame way, a prospective hirer always tries his instrument beforeconcluding the deal, running through the tunes to be sure that they arefairly up-to-date. When you get, say, six clients all rehearsing theirorgans at once in a small show-room. . . . 

This organ industry, by the way, is a very big thing; and the dealersmake much more by hire than by sale. Sometimes a _padrone_, who has donevery well, will buy an organ; later, he may buy another organ, andperhaps another. Then, with three organs, he sits down, and sends othermen out with them. Street organs, under our fatherly County Council, areforbidden on Sundays; nevertheless, Sunday being the only day whenmillions of people have any chance of recreation, many organs go out. Whither do they go? East, my dears. There, in any ramshackle hall, orfit-up arch-way, or disused stables, the boys and girls, out for fun, may dance the golden hours away throughout Sunday afternoon and evening. Often the organs are hired for Eastern weddings and christenings andother ceremonials, and, by setting the musician to work, say, in theback parlour, the boys and girls can fling their little feet about thegarden without interference from any one of the hundred authorities whohave us at their mercy. 

It is because of the organs, I think, that I chiefly loved Clerkenwell. Organs have been part of my life ever since I was old enough to sit upand take notice. Try to think of London without organs. Have they notadded incalculably to the store of human happiness, and helped manythousands over the waste patches of the week? They have; and I heapsmouldering curses upon the bland imbeciles of Bayswater who, some timeago, formed themselves into a society for, I think they called it, TheAbatement of Street Noises, and stuck their loathly notices in squaresand public streets forbidding street organs to practise there. Lethouse-agents take note that I and a dozen of my friends will never, never, never take a house in any area where organs or street vendors orstreet cries are prohibited. They are part of the very soul of London. Kill them, and you kill something lovely and desirable, without whichthe world will be the sadder. That any one should have the impudence toask for money for the carrying out of such a project is merely anotherproof of the disease of the age. They might as well form a society andappeal for funds for suppressing children from laughing or playing inthe streets. They might as well form a society for the strangulation ofall babies. They might as well. . . . But if I go on like this, I shall getangry. Thank Heaven, organs are not yet suppressed, though, after thecurtailing of licensed hours, anything is possible. In that event, itreally looks as if America were the only country in which to live, unless one could find some soft island in the Pacific, where one coulddo just as one jolly well pleased. 

Let's all go down Eyre Street Hill, for there, you know, organs arestill gurgling, and there are lazy laughter and spaghetti and _dolce farniente_, and cigarettes are six a penny. There are little restaurantshere hardly bigger than a couple of telephone boxes. They contain buttwo tables, and some wooden benches, but about a dozen gloriously savageboys from Palermo and Naples are noisily supping after their day's trampround London with whatever industry they affect. They have olive skins, black curly hair, flashing eyes, and fingers that dance with gemmyrings. A new-comer arrives, unhooking from his shoulders the wooden traywhich holds the group of statuettes that he has been hawking roundStreatham and Norwood. He salutes them in mellifluous tones, and sitsdown. He orders nothing; but a heaped-up dish of macaroni is put beforehim, and he attacks it with fork and finger. There are few women to beseen, but those few are gaudily arrayed in coloured handkerchiefs, theirmournful eyes and purring voices touching the stern night to beauty. Ofchildren there are dozens: furious boys and chattering girls. All thelittle girls, from four to fourteen, wear socks, and the narrow roadwayflashes with the whirling of little white legs, so that the pedestrianmust dodge his way along as one dancing a _schottische_. A fewpublic-houses shed their dusty radiance, but these, too, are littlebetter than dolls' houses. I have never seen village beer-shops sosmall. They are really about the size of the front room of a labourer'scottage, divided into two--Public Bar and Private Bar. 

Such is the High Street of Italy, where one feeds. Most of the Italians, however, live in one of those huge blocks of tenements of which thereare, I should think, a dozen in Clerkenwell. They seem to centre aboutthe sounding viaducts that leap over Rosebery Avenue. Upon a time theplace had a reputation for lawlessness, but that is now gone, with mostof the colour of things. Occasionally there is an affray with knives, but it is always among themselves: a sort of vendetta; and nobodyinterferes so long as they refrain from bloodshed or from annoyingpeaceable people. The services in the Italian Church are verypicturesque, and so, too, are their ceremonies at Christmas-time; whilethe procession of the children at First Communion is a thing of beauty. The little girls and boys walk together, the boys in black, the girls inwhite, with white wreaths gleaming in their dark curls. AtChristmas-time there are great feasts, and every Italian baker andrestaurant-keeper stocks his trays with Panetonnes, a kind of small loafor bun, covered with sugar, which are distributed among the little onesof the Church. 

An old friend of mine, named Luigi, who once kept a tiny wine-shop, lives in a little dirty room in Rosoman Street, and I sometimes spend anevening with him. But not in summer. I adjure you--do not visit animpoverished Italian who lives in one room in Clerkenwell, in thesummer; unless, of course, you are a sanitary inspector. He is anentertaining old fellow, and speaks a delicious Italian-Cocknese, whichno amount of trickery could render on the printed page. When I go, Iusually take him a flask of Chianti and some Italian cigars, for whichhe very nearly kisses me. 

But Luigi has a story. You will see that at once if you scan his face. There is something behind him--something he would like to forget. Ithappened about ten years ago, and I witnessed it. Ten years ago, Luigidid something--an act at once heroic, tragic, and idiotic. This was theway of it. 

It was an April night, and we were lounging at that corner which wasonce called Poverty Point; the corner where Leather Lane crashes intoClerkenwell Road, and where, of a summer night, gather the splendidsons of Italy to discuss, to grin, to fight, and to invent new oaths. Onthis corner, moreover, they pivot in times of danger, and, once they canmake the mazy circle of which it is the edge, safety from the pursuer istheirs. The place was alive with evening gladness. In the half-darkness, indolent groups lounged or strolled, filling their lungs with theheavily garlicked air of the place. 

Then an organ pulled up at the public-house which smiles goldenly uponMount Pleasant, and music broke upon us. Instantly, with the precisionof a harlequinade, a stream of giggling girls poured from Eyre StreetHill and Back Hill. With the commencement of a rag-tag dance, the Pointwas whipped to frivolous life. The loungers grunted, and moved up tosee. Clusters of children, little angels with dark eyes and languagesufficiently seasoned to melt a glacier, slipped up from nowhere, and, one by one, the girls among them slid into the dance. One of them had aberibboned tambourine. Two others wanted it, and would snatch it away. Its owner said they were--something they could not possibly have been. 

Stabs of light from the tenements pierced the dusk high and low. Thenight shone with recent rain, and in a shifting haze of grey and rosethe dancers sank and glided, until the public-house lamp was turned onand a cornet joined the organ. In the warm yellow light, the revelsbroke bounds, and, to the hysterical appeal of "Hiawatha, " the Pointbecame a Babel. . . . When most of the dancers had danced themselves toexhaustion, two of the smaller maidens stood out and essayed a kind ofcan-can. 

The crowd swooped in. It crowded with appreciation as they introducedall the piquant possibilities of the dance. It babbled its merriment atseeing little faces, which should show only the revel of April, bearingall the ravage of Autumn. 

Comments and exhortations, spiced to taste, flew about the Point, ricochetted, and returned in boomerang fashion to their authors, whorepolished them and shot them forth again. Heads bobbed back, forth, andup in the effort to see. In a prestissimo fire of joy, the novelexercise reached its finale, when . . . 

"Hi-hi! _Hè. _ _Eeeee!_" As though by signal, the whole Point wassuddenly aspurt with spears of flame, leaping, meeting, and crossing. Welooked round. The dance stopped, the organ gurgled away to rubbish, thecrowd took open order, and stared at the narrow alley of Back Hill. Blankets of smoke moved from its mouth, pushing their suffocating way upthe street. Twenty people hurt themselves in shrieking orders. Womenscreamed and ran. From an open window a tongue of flame was thrustderisively; it tickled a man's neck, and he swore. Then a lone woman hadthe sense to scream something intelligible. 

We all ran. English, Italian, and profane clashed together. Three smallboys strangled each other in a race for the fire-bell. In Back Hill, men, women, and children were hustling themselves through theground-floor window of the doomed house. Thick, languid flames blockedthe doorway, swaying idly, ready to fasten their fangs in anything thatapproached. Furniture crashed and bounded to the pavement. Mattresseswere flung out to receive the indecent figures of their owners. Thecrowd swelled feverishly. Women screamed. 

Gradually the crackle of burning wood and the ripple of falling glassgained voice above the outcry of the crowd. A shout of fear andadmiration surged up, as a spout of flame darted through the roof, andquivered proudly to the sky. Luigi threw back his sweeping felt hat, loosened his yellow neckcloth, tightened his scarlet waistband. "It isbad, " he said. "It is a fire. "

I said "Yes, " having nothing else to say. A few Cockneys inquiredresentfully why somebody didn't do something. Then the word went roundthat all were out but one. A woman was left at the top. A sick hushfell. Away in the upper regions a voice was wailing. The women turnedpale, and one or two edged away. The men whistled silently, and lookedserious. They had the air of waiting for something. It came. Luigi movedswiftly away from me, fought a way through the crowd, and stood by thedoor, his melodious head lashed by the fringe of the flames. 

"I go up, " he said operatically. 

A dozen men dashed from him, crying things. "Wet blanket, there. Quick!Here's a bloke going up. Italiano's going up!"

At the back of the crowd, where I stood, a few fools cheered. They wereEnglish. "'Ray! 'Ray! 'Ray! Good iron! 'E's gotter nerve, 'e 'as. Wouldn't athought it o' them Italians. "

The Italians were silent. From the house came long screams, terrible tohear in the London twilight. A Sicilian said something in his ownlanguage which cannot be set down; the proprietor of the Ristorante delCommercio also grew profane. The children stared and giggled, wonderingly. Blankets and buckets of water were conjured from someobscure place of succour. In half a minute the blankets were soaked, andLuigi was ready. 

A wispy man in a dented bowler danced with excitement. "Oh, he's gotternerve, if yeh like. Going to risk his life, he is. Going to risk hisblasted life. " Fresh and keener screams went down the golden stairway. Luigi flung the wet folds about him, vaulted the low sill, and then thewild light danced evilly about him. Outside, we watched and waited. Alurid silence settled, and the far cries of one of the late dancers whowas receiving correction for dancing indecent dances seemed entirely tofill space. The atmosphere was, as it were, about to crack and buckle, and I was feeling that Luigi was a heroic fool, when a passing navvy, not susceptible to influences, saved the situation by bursting intosong:--

 "You're here and I'm here, So what do we care?"

The wispy man looked round, reprovingly. "Easy on, there!" he implored. 

"Whaffor?"

"Well . . . Chep's risking his life. "

"Well . . . 'at don't make no difference. Be 'appy while yeh can, I say. "

"No, but . . . Chep's risking his life. "

 "Yew maide me love yew, I didn't wanter do it!"

"Risking his life, and all!"

Then the climax was reached. A scream sounded from above, then silence, then a confused rush of feet. The figure of Luigi filled the opening ofthe low window, and those nearest surged in to help and see. He wasdragged through, head first, and set on his feet. The fire-engine ravedand jangled in Clerkenwell Road, but there was no way for it. Thefiremen tried to clear the crowd, but it would not be denied its sightof the hero. It struggled in to admire. It roared and yelled in one anda hundred voices. The café proprietor gestured magnificently. Regard thehero! How he was brave! The wispy man nearly had a fit. He skipped. Risked his life, and all. For a blasted stranger. 

Luigi dropped the bundle gently from his arms, and stood over it, alittle bewildered at his reception. The firemen fought furiously, and atlast they cleared a passage for their plant. Then, as they cleared, thewispy man danced again, and seemed likely to die. He sprang forward andcapered before Luigi. I tried to get through to help Luigi out, but Iwas wedged like a fishbone in the throat of the gang. 

It was then that horrid screams came again from the house, winding offin ragged ends. The wispy, man spluttered. 

"Yeh damn fool! Look what yeh brought down. Look at it. Yeh damn fool!"

Luigi looked still bewildered, and now I fought with sharp elbows, andmanaged to get to the front rank. The man's shaking finger pointed atLuigi's feet. "D'you know what you done, Italiano? You made a mistake. Ablasted mistake. Aw . . . Yeh damn fool!"

I looked too. There was no woman at Luigi's feet. There was a bundle ofsheets, blanket, and carpet. A scream came from the house. Every windowfilled with flame. The roof fell inwards with a crash and a rain ofsparks. 

Clerkenwell has never forgiven Luigi. Luigi has never forgiven himself. 

A BASHER'S NIGHT

HOXTON

_LONDON JUNE_

 _Rank odours ride on every breeze; Skyward a hundred towers loom; And factories throb and workshops wheeze, And children pine in secret gloom. To squabbling birds the roofs declaim Their little tale of misery; And, smiling over murk and shame, A wild rose blows by Bermondsey. _

 _Where every traffic-thridden street Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine, And webbed with wire and choked with heat; Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine; And where, at evening, darkling lanes Fume with a sickly ribaldry-- Above the squalors and the pains, A wild rose blows by Bermondsey. _

 _Somewhere beneath a nest of tiles My little garret window squats, Staring across the cruel miles, And wondering of kindlier spots. An organ, just across the way, Sobs out its ragtime melody; But in my heart it seems to play: A wild rose blows by Bermondsey!_

 _And dreams of happy morning hills And woodlands laced with greenest boughs Are mine to-day amid the ills Of Tooley Street and wharfside sloughs, Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar, And engines gasp their horrid glee; I mark their ugliness no more: A wild rose blows by Bermondsey. _

A BASHER'S NIGHT

HOXTON

Hoxton is not merely virile; it is virulent. Life here hammers in theblood with something of the insistence of ragtime. The people--men, women, and children--are alive, spitefully alive. You feel that they areready to do you damage, with or without reason. Here are antagonism anddesire, stripped for battle. Little children, of three years old, havethe spirit in them; for they lean from tenement landings that jut overthe street, and, with becoming seriousness, spit upon the passingpedestrians, every hit scoring two to the marksman. 

The colour of Hoxton Street is a tremendous purple. It springs upon you, as you turn from Old Street, and envelops you. There are high, blacktenement houses. There are low cottages and fumbling passages. There aremellow fried-fish shops at every few yards. There are dirty beer-housesand a few public-houses. There are numerous cast-off clothing _salons_. And there are screeching Cockney women, raw and raffish, brutalizedchildren, and men who would survive in the fiercest jungle. Also thereis the Britannia Theatre and Hotel. The old Brit. ! It stands, withSadler's Wells and the Surrey, as one of the oldest homes of fustiandrama. Sadler's Wells is now a picture palace, and the Surrey is atwo-house Variety show. The old Brit. Held out longest, but even that isgoing now. Its annual pantomime was one of the events of the LondonSeason for the good Bohemian. Then all the Gallery First Nighters boysand girls would go down on the last night, which was Benefit Night forMrs. Sara Lane, the proprietress. Not only were bouquets handed up, butthe audience showered upon her tributes in more homely and substantialform. Here was a fine outlet for the originality of the crowd, and amongthe things that were passed over the orchestra-rails or lowered fromboxes and circles were chests of drawers, pairs of corsets, stockings, pillow-cases, washhand jugs and basins, hip-baths, old boots, mince-pies, Christmas puddings, bottles of beer, and various items oflumber and rubbish which aroused healthy and Homeric laughter at themoment, but which, set down in print at a time when Falstaffian humourhas departed from us, may arouse nothing but a curled lip and a rebuke. But it really was funny to see the stage littered with these tributes, which, as I say, included objects which are never exhibited in the lightof day to a mixed company. 

But the cream of Hoxton is its yobs. It is the toughest street inLondon. I don't mean that it is dangerous. But if you want danger, youhave only to ask for it, and it is yours. It will not be offered youanywhere in London, but if you do ask for it, Hoxton is the one placewhere there is "no waiting, " as the barbers say. The old Shoreditch Nileis near at hand, and you know what that was in the old days. Well, Hoxton to-day does its best to maintain the tradition of "The Nile. "

Now once upon a time there was a baby-journalist named Simple Simon. Hewent down to Hoxton one evening, after dinner. It had been the good oldEnglish dinner of Simpson's, preceded by two vermuths, accompanied by apint of claret, and covered in the retreat by four maraschinos. It was apicturesque night. A clammy fog blanketed the whole world. It swirledand swirled. Hoxton Street was a glorious dream, as enticinglyindefinite as an opium-sleep. Simple Simon had an appointment here. Theboys were to be out that night. Jimmie Flanagan, their leader, hadpassed the word to Simon that something would be doing, something worthbeing in. For that night was to witness the complete and enthusiasticbashing of Henry Wiggin, the copper's nark, the most loathed andspurned of all creeping things that creep upon the earth. 

Simon walked like a lamb into the arms of trouble. He strolled along themain street, peering every yard of his way through the writhing gloom. Nobody was about. He reached Bell Yard, and turned into it. Then heheard something. Something that brought him to a sharp halt. Before hesaw or heard anything more definite, he felt that he was surrounded. Toplace direction of sound was impossible. He heard, from every side, likethe whisper of a load of dead leaves, the rush of rubber shoes. Withsome agility he leaped to what he thought was the clear side, only totake a tight arm like a rope across his chest and another about hisknees. 

"There's one fer yew, 'Enry!" cried a spirited voice as a spirited palmsmote him on the nose. 

"Hi! Hi! Easy!" Simon appealed. "I ain't 'Enry, dammit! You're bashingme--me--Simon!" He swore rather finely; but the fog, the generalconfusion, and, above all, the enthusiasm of bashing renderedidentification by voice impracticable. Indeed, if any heard it, it hadno effect; for, so they had some one to bash, they would bash. It didn'tmatter to them, just so it was a bash. Flanagan heard it quite clearly, but he knew the madness of attempting to stop eleven burly Hoxton yobsonce they were well in. . . . 

"I'm not 'Enry. I ain't the nark!" But he was turned face downward, andhis mouth was over a gully-hole, so that his protests scared only therats in the sewer. He set his teeth, and writhed and jerked and swung, and for some seconds no bashing could proceed, for he was of the stuffof which swordsmen are made--small, lithe, and light: useless in astand-up fight with fists, but good for anything in a scrum. When, however, as at present, eleven happy lads were seeking each a grip onhis person, it became difficult to defeat their purpose. But at last, ashe was about to make a final wrench at the expense of his coat, themetal tips on his boots undid him. He dug his heels backward to get apurchase, he struck the slippery surface of the kerb instead of theyielding wood of the roadway, and in a moment he was down beyond allstruggle. A foot landed feelingly against his ribs, another took him onthe face; and for all that they were rubbered they stung horribly. Then, with two pairs of feet on his stomach, and two on his legs, he heardthat wild whisper that may unnerve the stoutest--

"Orf wi' yer belts, boys!"

The bashing of the nark was about to begin. There was a quick jingle asmany leather belts were loosed, followed by a whistle, and--_zpt_! hereceived the accolade of narkhood. Again and again they came, and theystung and bit, and he could not move. They spat all about him. He sworecrudely but sincerely, and if oaths have any potency his tormentorsshould have withered where they stood. Two and three at a time theycame, for there were eleven of them--Flanagan having discreetlyretired--and all were anxious to christen their nice new belts on thebody of the hated nark; and they did so zealously, while Simon couldonly lie still and swear and pray for a happy moment that should freeone of his hands. . . . 

He knew it was a mistake, and he kept his temper so far as possible. Buthuman nature came out with the weals and bruises. He didn't want to dothe dirty on them, he didn't want to take extreme steps, but dammit, this was the frozen limit. He knew that when their mistake was pointedout they would offer lavish apologies and pots of four-'arf, but theflesh is only the flesh. 

"Turn the blanker over!"

In that moment, as he was lifted round, his left hand was freed. In aflash it fumbled at his breast. Twisting his head aside, he gotsomething between his teeth, and through the fetid fog went the shiverand whine of the Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he blew, with thecorrect inflection. 

At the first call he was dropped like a hot coal. From other worldscame an answering call. He blew again. Then, like thin jets of water, whistles spurted from every direction. He heard the sound of scutteringfeet as his enemies withdrew. He heard the sound of scuttering feet asthey closed in again. But he was not waiting for trouble. He pulled hisburning self together, and ran for the lights that stammered through thegloom at the Britannia. He whistled as he ran. Curses followed him. 

At the Britannia he collided with a slow constable. He flung a story athim. The constable inspected him, and took notes. The lurking passagesbegan to brighten with life, and where, a moment ago, was sick torpiditywas now movement, clamour. Distant whistles still cried. The placetingled with nervous life. 

Some cried "Whassup?" and some cried "Stanback, cancher!" They stared, bobbed, inquired, conjectured. The women were voluble. The men spat. Aforest of faces grew up about Simple Simon. A hurricane of hands brokeabout his head. The constable took notes and whistled. A humoristappeared. 

"'Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo! Back water there, some of yer. Stop yer shoving. Ain't nobody bin asking for me? Stop the fight. I forbid the bangs!"

But he was not popular. They jostled him. 

"'Ere, " cried some one, "let some one else have a see, Fatty! Otherpeople wanter have a see, don't they?"

"Stanback--stanback! Why cancher stanback!"

Fatty inquired if Someone wanted a smash over the snitch. Because, ifso. . . . 

A woman held that Simple Simon had a rummy hat on. There were pauses, while the crowd waited and shuffled its feet, as between the acts. 

Fatty asked why some one didn't do something. Alwis the way, though--them police. Stanback--git back on your mat, Toby. 

And then . . . And then the swelling, clamorous, complaining crowdswooped in on itself with a sudden undeniable movement. Its centreflattened, wavered, broke, and the impelling force was brought face toface with Simple Simon and the constable. It was Flanagan and the boys. 

Three pairs of arms collared the constable low. Simple Simon felt a jerkon his arm that nearly pulled it from its socket, and a crackling likesandpaper at his ear. "Bolt for it!"

And he would have done so, but at that moment the answering whistlesleaped to a sharper volume, and through the distorting fog came anticshapes of blue, helmeted. The lights of the Britannia rose up. Panicsmote the crowd, and for a moment there was a fury of feet. 

Women screamed. Others cried for help. Some one cried, "Hot stuff, boys--let 'em 'ave it where it 'urts most!"

Fatty cried: "Git orf my foot! If I find the blank blank blank what trodon my blank 'and, I'll----!"

"Look out, boys! Truncheons are out!"

They ran, slipped, fell, rolled. A cold voice from a remote window, remarked, above the din, that whatever he'd done he'd got a rummy haton. A young girl was pinioned against the wall by a struggling mass forwhom there was no way. There was in the air an imminence of incident, acid and barbed. The girl screamed. She implored. Then, with a franticmovement, her free hand flew to her hat. She withdrew something horrid, and brought it down, horridly, three times. Three shrieks flitted fromher corner like sparks from a funnel. But her passage was cleared. 

Then some important fool pulled the fire-alarm. 

"Stanback, Stinkpot, cancher? Gawd, if I cop that young 'un wi' thebashed 'elmet, I'll learn him hell!"

"If I cop 'old of the blanker what trod on my 'and, I'll----!"

"No, but--'e 'ad a rummy 'at on. 'E 'ad. "

Away distant, one heard the brazen voice of the fire-engine, clangingdanger through the yellow maze of Hoxton streets. There was the jangleof harness and bells; the clop-clop of hoofs, rising to a clatter. Therewas the scamper of a thousand feet as the engine swung into the streetwith the lordliest flourish and address. Close behind it a long, leanred thing swayed to and fro, like some ancient dragon seeking itssupper. 

"Whichway, whichway, whichway?" it roared. 

"Ever bin had?" cried the humorist. "There ain't no pleading fire! Thisis a picnic, this is. 'Ave a banana?"

"WhichWAY?" screamed the engine. "Don't no one know which way?"

The humorist answered them by a gesture known in polite circles as a"raspberry. " Then a constable, with fierce face, battered helmet, andtorn tunic, and with an arm-lock on a perfectly innocent non-combatant, flung commands in rapid gusts--

"This way, Fire. King's name. Out hoses!"

The fog rolled and rolled. The Britannia gleamed on the scene withalmost tragic solemnity. Agonized shapes rushed hither and thither. Women screamed. Then a rich Irish voice sang loud above all: "Weeny, boys!"

As the firemen leaped from their perches on the engine to out hoses, so, mysteriously, did the combat cease. Constables found themselves, in amoment, wrestling with thick fog and nothing more. The boys were gone. Only women screamed. 

Some one said: "If I cop a hold of the blankety blank blanker what trodon my blanking 'and, I'll just about----!"

On the word "Weeny" Simple Simon was once again jerked by the arm, andhustled furiously down passages, round corners, and through alleyways, finally to be flung into the misty radiance of Shoreditch High Street, with the terse farewell: "Now run--for the love of glory, run!"

But he didn't. He stood still against a friendly wall, and suffered. Hestraightened his dress. He touched sore places with a tender solicitude. His head was racking. All his limbs ached and burned. He desired nothingbut the cold sheets of his bed and a bottle of embrocation. He swore atthe fog, with a fine relish for the colour of sounds. He swore at thingsthat were in no way responsible for his misfortune. Somewhere, heconjectured, in warmth and safety, Henry Wiggin, the copper's nark, wasperfectly enjoying his supper of fried fish and 'taters and stout. 

And then, over the sad, yellow night, faint and sweet and far away, asthe memory of childhood, came a still small voice--

"No, but 'e 'ad a rummy 'at on, eh?"

A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT

BLACKWALL

_WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD_

 _Black man--white man--brown man--yellow man-- All the lousy Orient loafing on the quay: Hindoo, Dago, Jap, Malay, and Chinaman Dipping into London from the great green sea!_

 _Black man--white man--brown man--yellow man-- Pennyfields and Poplar and Chinatown for me! Stately-moving cut-throats and many-coloured mysteries, Never were such lusty things for London lads to see!_

 _On the evil twilight--rose and star and silver-- Steals a song that long ago in Singapore they sang: Fragrant of spices, of incense and opium, Cinnamon and aconite, the betel and the bhang. _

 _Three miles straight lies lily-clad Belgravia, Thin-lipped ladies and padded men and pale. But here are turbaned princes and velvet-glancing gentlemen, Tom-tom and sharp knife and salt-caked sail. _

 _Then get you down to Limehouse, by riggings, wharf, and smoke-stack, Glamour, dirt, and perfume, and dusky men and gold; For down in lurking Limehouse there's the blue moon of the Orient-- Lamps for young Aladdins, and bowies for the bold!_

A DOWN-STREAM NIGHT

BLACKWALL

Tide was at flood, and below Limehouse Hole the waters thrashed thewharves with malice. The hour was late, but life ran high in thoseparts. Against the savage purple of the night a few wisps of rigging andsome gruff funnels stood up in East and West India Docks. 

Sheer above the walls of East India Dock rose the deck of the _CawdorCastle_, as splendidly correct as a cathedral. The leaping lines of herseemed lost in the high skies, and she stood out sharply, almostecstatically. Against such superb forces of man, the forces of Natureseemed dwarfed. It was a lyric in steel and iron. Men hurried from thelanding-stage, up the plank, vanishing into the sly glooms of the hugeport-holes. Chains rang and rattled. Lascars of every kind flashed hereand there: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in everylingo was on the air. Some hurried from the dock, making for alodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, butrather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in afar berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonousvoice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-_ah_, EEEE-_ah_!" Boats were loading up. Others were unloading. Over all was the glare of arclights, and the flutter of honeyed tongues. 

A few tugs were moored at the landing-stages. One or two men hung aboutthem, smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall streets came to themin throbbing blasts, for it was Saturday night, and closing time. Overthe great plain of London went up a great cry. Outside the doors ofevery hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and OxfordStreet, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes oftheir recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now ofcomplaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptuconcerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows ofeternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousandwives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, for a thousand jovial orbrutal mates; and a thousand beds received their occupants in fullharness, booted and hatted, as though the enemy were at the gates. Everywhere strains of liquor-music surged up for the next thirtyminutes, finally to die away piecemeal as different roads receiveddifferent revellers. 

In the hot, bilious dark of Blackwall, the tug swayed and jerked, andthe voices of the men seemed almost to shatter the night. But high abovethem was the dirty main street, and there "The Galloping Horses" flaredand fluttered and roared. There seemed to be trouble. . . . One heard aquerulous voice: "I said TIME, din' I?" And another: "Well, let 'improve it. Let 'im 'it me, that's all!" From the tug you could see thedust of the street rise in answering clouds to the assaults of manyfeet. Then, quite suddenly, the wide swing-doors of the bar flappedback. A golden gleam burst on the night and seemed to vomit a slitheringmass of men which writhed and rolled like an octopus. Then you heard thecollapsible gates run to their sockets with a glad clang, and the gaswas switched off. 

The fester of noise widened and widened, and at last burst into twentyminute pieces. And now a large voice commanded the silence of the night, and cried upon London: "What I said is what I say now: that fan-tan isfan-tan. And blasted miracles is blasted miracles. "

I stood on the tug, with some of the boys, and in silence we watched thedrama that was about to unfold itself. I had tramped there, unthinkingly, up the thunderous length of Rotherhithe Tunnel and downEast India Dock Road and had fallen in with Chuck Lightfoot and some ofhis waterside cronies. We were lounging on the tug, so far as Iremember, because we were lounging on the tug. For no other reason. 

After the outcry of the Great Voice, there was a short silence. It wasbroken by a woman, who cried: "Ar-ferr!"

"You go on 'ome!" cried Arfer. 

The woman replied that bad-word husbands who stayed out so bad-wordilylate ought to be bad-wordily bad-worded. The next moment Arfer had gonedown to a blow from the Great Voice. 

Things began to happen. There was a loud scratch as a hundred feetscuttered backward. The victim sprang up. For a moment astonishmentseemed to hold him, as he bleared; then he seemed about to burst withwrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The lady screamed for aid. Hespat on his hands. He hitched his trousers. Hands down, chin protruded, he advanced on his opponent with the slow, insidious movement of thestreet fighter. The other man dashed in, beat him off with the left, andfollowed it with three to the face with the right. He pressed his man. He ducked a lumbering right swing, and sent a one-two to the body. Thelady had lashed herself to a whirlwind of profanity. She spat words atthe crowd, and oaths fell like toads from her lips. We below heard thecrowd and the lady; but we saw only the principals of the combat until. . . Until the lady, disregarding the ethics of the game, flew in withscrewed face, caught the coming arm of the big man, and pinioned itbeneath her own. 

"'Elp, 'elp, some of yeh!" she cried. Her husband fastened on to hisenemy, tore at his collar with wild fingers, opened his mouth, and triedto bite. The big man struggled with both. The bulky form of the lady wasswung back and forth by his cunning arm; and one heard the crowd standby, press in, rush back, in rhythm to the movements of the battlers. Amoment later the lady was down and out. A sudden blow at the breast fromthe great elbow. I heard her fall. . . . I heard the gasp of the crowd. 

Here and there the blank street was suddenly struck to life. Warm blindsbegan to wink. One heard the creak of opening windows, and voices: "Whydoncher separate 'em? Why cancher shut that plurry row?" With the newlight one saw the crowd against a ground of chocolate hue. Here andthere a cigarette picked out a face, glowing like an evil eye. All elsewas dank darkness. 

Round and round the combatants went. Two well-set youngsters made a dashupon them, only to be swung from their feet into the crowd. They kicked, twisted, jerked, panted, now staggered a few paces, now stood still, straining silently. Now they were down, now up. Another woman's voicewailed across the unhappy water in the mournful accent of Belfast:"Fr-r-rank, Fr-rank, where arrre ye? Oh, Fr-rank, Fr-rank--ye br-reak mehear-r-t!"

Then Chuck Lightfoot, known also as The Panther, The Croucher, and ThePrize Packet, shifted from my side. I looked at him. "Fed up on this, Iam. Wait here. " He vaulted from the deck of the tug to thelanding-stage, strode up the gang-plank, and was lost in the long shaftof darkness. 

From above one heard a noise--a nasty noise: the sound of a man's headbeing banged on the pavement. Frank's wife screamed: "Separate 'em! He'skillin' 'im! Why don't some one do somethin'?"

Another woman cried: "I'll be sick. Stop 'em! I daresn't look. "

Then everything stopped. We heard a low hum, swelling swiftly to adefinite cry. The word "dead--dead--dead" flitted from mouth to mouth. Some turned away. Others approached as near as they dared, retreatingfearfully when a push from behind drove them forward. . . . 

But nobody was dead. Into the centre light had dashed Chuck Lightfoot. Chuck Lightfoot was a pugilistic manager. He was a lot of other thingsbesides. He was the straightest boy I have ever met in that line. He hadevery high animal quality that a man should have. And he had a coldnerve that made men twice his size afraid of him. 

The fight was stopped. Two blows from Chuck had stopped it. The crowdgathered round and gave first aid to both combatants, while Chuck facedthem, and waited for assaults. We climbed up and stood with him, butnothing happened. Tragedy is so often imminent in this region, and sooften trickles away to rubbish. The crowd was vociferous and gestic. Itswooped about us, and inquired, conjectured, disapproved, condemned. 

Then came several blue helmets and swift dispersal. 

The affair was over. 

AN ART NIGHT

CHELSEA

_A LONDON MOMENT_

 _Often have I, in my desolate years, Flogged a jaded heart in loud saloons; Often have I fled myself with tears, Wandering under pallid, passionate moons. _

 _Often have I slunk through pleasured rites, Lonely in the tumult of decay; Often marked the hectic London nights Flowing from the violet-lidded day. _

 _Yet, because of you, the world has been Kindlier. Oh, little heart-o'-rose, I have glimpsed a beauty seldom seen In this labyrinthine mist of woes. _

 _Beauty smiles at me from common things, All the way from Fleet Street to the Strand; Even in the song the barmaid sings I have found a fresh enchanted land. _

 _Pass me by, you little vagrant joy. Brush me from your delicate mimic world. Nothing of you now can e'er annoy, Since your beauty has my heart empearled. _

 _Pass me by; and only let me say: Glad I am for pain of loving you, Glad--for, in the tumult of decay, Life is nobler than I ever knew. _

AN ART NIGHT

CHELSEA

"The choicest bit of London!" That is William Dean Howells' impressionof Chelsea. And, if you would perceive rightly the soul of Chelsea, youmust view it through the pearl-grey haze of just such a temperament asthat of the suave American novelist. If you have not that temperament, then Chelsea is not for you; try Hampstead or Streatham or Bayswater. 

Of all suburbs it is the most subtle. It has more soul in one shortstreet than you will find in the whole mass of Oxford Street andPiccadilly. There is something curiously feminine and intoxicating inthe quality of its charm, something that evokes the silver-pensive mood. One visions it as a graceful spinster--watered silks, ruffles, corkscrewcurls, you know, with lily fingers caressing the keys of herharpsichord. Pass down Cheyne Walk at whatever time you will, and youare never alone; little companies of delicate fancy join you at everystep. The gasworks may gloom at you from the far side. The L. C. C. Carsmay hum and clang. But fancy sweeps them away. It is like sitting amidthe barbarities of a Hyde Park drawing-room, in the emerald dusk, listening to the pathetic wheezing of a musical-box, ridiculouslysweet:--

 Oh, don't you remember the days when we roamed, Sweet Phillis, by lane and by lea?

Whatever you want in Chelsea--that you will find, assuming, of course, the possession of the Chelsea temperament. Whistler discovered hersilvern beauty when he first saw her reclining by the river, beautifyingthat which beautifies her. All about Chelsea the colours seem to chimewith their backgrounds as though they loved them; and when the lamps arelighted, flinging soft shadows on sixteenth and seventeenth-centurygables and doorways and passages, then she becomes a place of wonder, aBagdad, a treasure-ground for the artist. 

And the artists have discovered her. Chelsea has much to show. Hampstead, Kensington, Mayfair--these be rich in gilt-trapping names, but no part of England can produce such a shining array of names, whosegreatness owes nothing to time, place, or social circumstance: the namesof those whose greatness is of the soul, and who have shaken the worldwith the beauty they have revealed to us. But Art has now takenpossession of her, and it is as the studio of the artist that Chelsea isknown to-day. Step this way, if you please. We draw the curtain. _Vie deBohème!_ But not, mark you, the _vie de Bohème_ of Murger. True, Rodolphe and Marcel are here, and Mimi and Musette. But the studio isnot the squalid garret that we know. We have changed all that. Rodolphewrites light verse for the "largest circulations. " Mimi draws fashionplates, and dresses like the Duchess of the novelettes. Marcel--well, Marcel of Chelsea may be poor, but his is only a relative poverty. He ispoor in so far as he dines for two shillings instead of five. The Marcelof to-day who is accustomed to skipping a meal by stress ofcircumstances doesn't live in Chelsea. He simply couldn't do it; look atthe rents. He lives in Walworth Road or Kentish Town. No; there is a_vie de Bohème_ at Chelsea, but it is a Bohemia of coffee liqueurs andTurkish cigarettes. 

The beginnings of the delectable suburb are obscure. It seems to haveassumed importance on the day when Henry VIII "acquired" its manor, which led to the building of numerous sycophantic houses. The Duchess ofMonmouth had a residence here, with the delightful John Gay assecretary. Can one imagine a modern Duchess with a modern poet assecretary? The same house was later occupied by the gouty dyspepticSmollett, who wrote all his books at the top of his bad temper. Thencame--but one could fill an entire volume with nothing but a list of thegoodly fellowship of Chelsea. 

The book about Chelsea has yet to be written. Such a book shoulddisclose to us the soul of the place, with its eternal youth and eternalantiquity. It should introduce us to its charming ghosts--it isdifficult to name one disagreeable person in this pageant; even thecantankerous Smollett was soothed when he came under its spell. Itshould enable us to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer acquaintance, with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgottenlaureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, George Meredith, Swinburne, Holman Hunt, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Oscar and Willie Wilde, Count d'Orsay, George Eliot, and a host of lesser but equally adorablepersonalities whose names must come "among those present. " It shouldshow us its famous places. It should afford us peep-holes into thestudios of famous artists--Augustus John's studio is a revelation incareful disarrangement; it should take us round a "Show Sunday"; itshould reconstruct the naïve gaieties of Cremorne; and, finally, itshould recreate and illumine all the large, forgotten moments in thelives of those apostles of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the soulof Chelsea has fused with more of herself than men may know; ending, perhaps, with a disquisition on the effects of environment on thelabours of genius. 

Such a book must be done by a stranger, an observer, one with a graciouspen, a delicate, entirely human mind. There is one man above all who isdivinely appointed for the task. 

Please, Mr. W. D. Howells, will you write it for us?

 * * * * *

I was strolling in philosophic mood down the never-ending King's Road, one November night, debating whether I should drop in at the ChelseaPalace, or have just one more at the "Bells, " when I ran into the R. B. A. He is a large man, and running into him rather upsets one's train ofthought. When I had smoothed my nose and dusted my trousers, I said:"Well, what about it?" He said: "Well, what about it?"

So we turned into the "Six Bells, " the evening haunt of every goodartist. He said he hadn't much money, so what about it? We decided on aGuinness to begin with, and then he ordered some Welsh Rarebits, while Iinspected the walls of the saloon, which are decorated with nothing butoriginals, many of them bearing resounding names. In the billiard-roomhe introduced me to Augustus John and three other famous men who mightnot like it known that they drink beer in public-houses. When the WelshRarebits were announced, we went upstairs to the cosy dining-room andfeasted gorgeously, watching, from the window, the many-coloured life ofChelsea. . . . 

When every scrap of food on our plates was gone, we had anotherGuinness, and I went back to his studio, a beautiful room with oakpanelling and electric light, which he rented from a travelling pal forthe ridiculous sum of three shillings a week. It stood next to thereconstructed Crosby Hall, and looked out on a wide prospect of slopingroofs, peppered with a sharp light. 

He sat down and showed me his day's work. He showed me etchings, oils, pastels. He told me stories. He showed me caricatures of the famouspeople with whom he had _bohèmed_. Then, at about ten o'clock, he saidit was rather dull; and what about it? He knew a place, quite near, where some of the boys were sure to be; what about it?

So we descended the lone staircase, and came out to the windyembankment, where self-important little tugs were raking the water withthe beams of their headlights. Thence we made many turnings, andstopped at a house near the Models' Club. At this club, which was formedonly in 1913, the artists may go at any time to secure a model--which isa distinct boon. The old way was for the model to call on the artist, the result being that the unfortunate man was pestered with dozens ofgirls for whom he had no use, while the one model he really wanted neverappeared. The club combines the advantages of club, employment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking-room; every room is a smoking-room, forthere are two things which are essential to the comfort of thegirl-model, and they are cigarettes and sweets. These are their onlyindulgences, for, obviously, if you are depending for your livelihood onyour personal figure, self-denial and an abstemious life are compulsory. 

If you want to know what is doing in the art world, who is paintingwhat, and why, then get yourself invited to tea--China tea only. Thegathering is picturesque, for the model has, of course, the knack of theeffective pose, not only professionally but socially. It is a beautifulclub, and it is one more answer to the eternal question Why Girls Don'tMarry. With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, why on earth should they?

The R. B. A. Pulled up short and said there we were, and what about it? Weknocked at the door, and were admitted by an anarchist. At least, Ithink he was an anarchist, because he was just like the pictures. I havemet only eighteen real anarchists, two of whom had thrown a bomb; but Icould never really believe in them; they wore morning coats and bowlerhats and were clean-shaven. 

"Where are they?" asked the R. B. A. 

"They're awa' oopstairs, laddie, " said the anarchist. "Taak heed yedinna stoomble; the carrrpet's a wee bit loose. "

We crossed the tiny hall and ascended the shabby stairs. From an opendoor trickled the tones of a cheap piano and the mellow, philosophicchant of the 'cello. They were playing Elgar's "Salut d'Amour. " The roomwas dark save for one candle at the piano and the dancing firelight. Inthe dusk it looked like Balestieri's picture of "Beethoven" which adornsevery suburban drawing-room with a leaning towards the Artistic. Peoplewere sprawled here and there, but to distinguish them was impossible. Ifell over some one's foot, and a light treble gurgled at me, "Sorry, oldboy!" I caught a whisk of curls as the thin gleam of the candle fellthat way. The R. B. A. Crossed the room as one who was familiar with itstopography, and settled himself in a far chair. The anarchist took myarm, and said:--

"Do ye sit down whurr ye can, laddie. And ye'll ha' a drink?"

I fell over some more feet and collapsed on a low settee. I found myselfby the side of a lady in solemn crimson. Her raven hair was hanging downher back. Her arms were bare. She smoked a Virginia cigarettevindictively. Sometimes she leaned forward, addressed the piano, andsaid: "Shut that row, Mollie, can't you. We want to talk. "

The anarchist brought me a Scotch-and-soda, and then she became aware ofmy presence. She looked at me; she looked at the drink. She said to theanarchist: "Where's mine?" He said: "What is it?" "Crem-dermont!" shesnapped. 

Out of the smoky glooms of the room came light laughter and merryvoices. One saw dimly, as in a dream, graceful forms reclininggracefully, attended by carelessly dressed but distinguished young men. Some of these raised their voices, and one heard the self-proud accentof Oxford. The music stopped, and the girls sprawled themselves more andmore negligently, nestling to the rough coats of the boys. The haze ofsmoke thickened. I prepared for a boring evening. 

One of the Oxford boys said he knew an awfully good story, but it wasrather risky, you know. I pricked up my ears. Did we know thestory--story about a fellah--fellah who had an aunt, you know? Andfellah's aunt was most frightfully keen on dogs and all that, youknow. . . . After three minutes of it I lost interest in the story. Itconcerned Old George and Herbert and young Helen, and various otherpeople who seemed familiar to everybody but myself. 

I never heard the finish of it. I became rather interested in a scenenear the window, where a boy of about my own age was furiously kissing agirl somewhat younger. Then the lady at my side stretched a long armtowards me, and languished, and making the best of a bad job, Ilanguished, too. When the funny story and the fellah's aunt had beendisposed of, some one else went to the piano and played Debussy, and theanarchist brought me another drink; and the whole thing was suchpainfully manufactured Bohemianism that it made me a little tired. Theroom, the appointments, the absence of light, Debussy, the drinks, andthe girls' costumes were so obviously part of an elaborate make-up, anarrangement of life. The only spontaneous note was that which was beingstruck near the window. I decided to slip away, and fell down the raggedstairs into Chelsea, and looked upon the shadow-fretted streets, wherethe arc-lamps, falling through the trees, dappled the pavements withlight. 

The skies were dashed with stars and a sick moon. It was trying to snow. I tripped down the steps from the door, and ran lightly into a girl whostood at the gate, looking up at the room I had just left. The cheekthat was turned toward me was clumsily daubed with carmine and rouge. Snowflakes fell dejectedly about her narrow shoulders. She just glancedat me, and then back at the window. I looked up, too. The piano was atit again, and some one was singing. The thread of light just showed youthe crimson curtains and the heavy oak beams. The pianist broke intoDelilah's song, and the voice swam after it. It was a clear, warmvoice, typical of the fifth-rate concert platform. But the girl, herface uplifted, dropped her lips in a half-whispered exclamation ofwonder, "Cuh!" I should have said that she was, for the first time, touching finger-tips with beauty. It moved her as something comic shouldhave done. Her face lit to a smile, and then a chuckle of delight ranfrom her. 

The voice was doing its best. It sank to despair, it leaped to lyricpassion, it caressed a low note of ecstatic pain, and then, like adew-delighted bird, it fled up and hovered on a timid note of appeal. The girl giggled. As the voice died on a long, soft note, she laughedaloud, and swallowed. She looked around and caught my eye. It seemedthat she had something about which she must talk. 

. . . "Not bad, eh?" she said. 

"No, " I answered. "Not so dusty. "

"Makes you feel . . . Kind of rummy, you know, don't it? Wonder what itfeels like to sing like that, eh? Makes me . . . Sort of . . . 'fyouunderstand . . . Funny like. Makes me want to. . . . "

From the window came one of the Oxford voices. "_No_ EARTHLY, dear oldgirl. You'll _never_ sing. Your _values_, you know, and _all_ thatare. . . . "

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

_STEPNEY CAUSEWAY_

 _Beyond the pleading lip, the reaching hand, Laughter and tear; Beyond the grief that none would understand; Beyond all fear. Dreams ended, beauty broken, Deeds done, and last words spoken, Quiet she lies. _

 _Far, far from our delirious dark and light, She finds her sleep. No more the noisy silences of night Shall hear her weep. The blossomed boughs break over Her holy breast to cover From any eyes. Till the stark dawn shall drink the latest star, So let her be. O Love and Beauty! She has wandered far And now comes home to thee. _

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

The Russian quarter always saddens me. For one thing, it hasassociations which scratch my heart regularly every month when myaffairs take me into those parts. Forgetting is the most wearisome ofall pains to which we humans are subject; and for some of us there is somuch to forget. For some of us there is Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, and the devastating loveliness of Isabel. For anotherthing, its atmosphere is so depressingly Slavonic. It is as dismal andas overdone as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. How shall I giveyou the sharp flavour of it, or catch the temper of its streets?

It seems impossible that one should ensnare its elusive spirit. Wordsmay come, but they are words, hard and stiff-necked and pedestrian. Oneneeds symbols and butterflies. 

 * * * * *

Beauty is a strange bird. Hither and thither she flies, and settleswhere she will; and men will say that she is found here andthere--sometimes in Perugia, sometimes in Mayfair, sometimes in theHimalaya. I have known men who found her in the dark melancholy ofLittle Russia, and I can understand them. For beauty appears, too, invarious guise; and some men adore her in silks and some in rags. Thereare girls in this quarter who will smite the heart out of you, whosebeauty will cry itself into your very blood. White's Row and thefastnesses of Stepney do not produce many choice blooms; there are nolilies in these gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic to regardor to talk with. They are not even clean. The secrets of their toiletare not known to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever appear in largequantities. And yet. . . . They walk or lounge, languorous andheavy-lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of smouldering fire in theirdrowsy gaze. Rich, olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either gloomyor brassy, and caressing voices with the lisp of Bethnal Green. You maysee them about the streets which they have made their own, carryingloads of as enchanting curls as Murger's Mimi. 

But don't run away with the idea that they are wistful, or luscious, orromantic; they are not. Go and mix with them if you nurse that illusion. Wistfulness and romance are in the atmosphere, but the people arepractical . . . More practical and much less romantic than Mr. JohnJenkinson of Golder's Green. 

You may meet them in the restaurants of Little Montagu Street, OsbornStreet, and the byways off Brick Lane. The girls are mostlycigarette-makers, employed at one of the innumerable tobacco factoriesin the district. Cigarette-maker recalls "Carmen" and Marion Crawford'sstory; but here are only the squalid and the beastly. Brick Lane and theimmediate neighbourhood hold many factories, each with a fineodour--bed-flock, fur, human hair, and the slaughter-house. Mingle thesewith sheep-skins warm from the carcass, and the decaying refuse in everygutter, and you will understand why I always smoke cigars inSpitalfields. In these cafés I have met on occasion those seriocomics, Louise Michel, Emma Goldmann, and Chicago May. Beilis, the hero of theblood-ritual trial, was here some months ago; and Enrico Malatesta hasvisited, too. Among the men--fuzzy-bearded, shifty-eyed fellows--thereare those who have been to Siberia and back. But do not ask them aboutSiberia, nor question how they got back. There are some things toodisgusting even to talk about. Siberia is not exciting; it is filthy. But you may sit among them, the men and the dark, gazelle-eyed girls;and you may take caviare, tea-and-lemon, and black bread; andconversation will bring you a proffered cigarette. 

It was in these streets that I first met that giant of letters, Mr. W. G. Waters, better known to the newspaper public as "Spring Onions, " butunfortunately I did not meet him in his gay days, but in his secondperiod, his regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a fearsome rival inthe subtle art of Poesy. I stood him a cup of cocoa--for you know, ifyou read your newspaper, that Spring was a teetotaller. He signed thepledge, at the request of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at ThamesPolice Court, in 1898, and it was his proud boast that he had kept itever since. He was then seventy-nine. His father died of drink atthirty-seven, and Dean Farrar once told Spring that his case wasexcusable, since it was hereditary. But, although Spring went to prisonat the age of thirteen for drunkenness, and has "been in" thirty-ninetimes, he didn't die at thirty-seven. I wonder what the moral is? Hishappiest days, he assured me, were spent in old Clerkenwell Prison, nowClerkenwell Post Office, and on one occasion, as he was the onlyprisoner who could read, he was permitted to entertain his companions byextracts from _Good Words_, without much effect, he added, as most ofthem are in and out even now. One important factor in the making of hisgrand resolution was that a girl he knew in Stepney, who was so far gonethat even the Court missionary had given her up, came to him oneChristmastime. She was in the depths of misery and hunger. 

"Spring, " she said, "give me a job!"

So Spring gave her the job of cleaning out his one room, for which shewas to receive half a crown. She obeyed him; and when he returned, andlooked under the floor where he stored his savings from the sale of hispoems (nearly seven pounds) they also had been cleaned. 

That settled it. Spring decided to cut all his acquaintances, but hecould only do that successfully by some very public step. So he went toSir John Dickinson and signed the pledge in his presence. Said he--

"And now, I find that after fifteen years of teetotalism, I write betterpoetry. Every time I feel I want a drink, I say to myself: 'Spring--sitdown and write a poem!'"

He was then messenger at Thames Police Court, enjoying the friendshipand interest of all. He read me about a dozen of his lighter lyrics. Here is one of the finer gems:--

 How many a poet would like to have Letters from royalty--prince, king, and queen; But, like some insignificant ocean wave, They are passed over, mayhap never seen. But when I myself address good Royals, And send them verses from my fertile brain, See how they thank me very much for my flowing strain!

In proof of which he would dig out letters from King Edward, QueenAlexandra, and Queen Mary. 

One of these days I am going to do a book about those London characterswithout reference to whom our daily newspapers are incomplete. I meanpeople like the late lamented Craig, the poet of the Oval CricketGround, Captain Hunnable, of Ilford, Mr. Algernon Ashton, Spiv. Bagster, of Westminster, that gay farceur, "D. S. Windell, " Stewart Gray, theNature enthusiast. But first and foremost must come--Spring Onions. 

On the southern side of the quarter is Sidney Street, of sinistermemory. You remember the siege of Sidney Street? A great time for LittleRussia. You may remember how the police surrounded that little FortChabrol. You may remember how the deadly aim of Peter the Painter andhis fellow-conspirators got home on the force again and again. Youremember how the police, in their helplessness against such fatalisticdefiance of their authority, appealed to Government, and how Governmentsent down a detachment of the Irish Guards. There was a real CabinetMinister in it, too; he came down in his motor-car to superintendmanoeuvres and compliment gallant officers on their strategy. And yet, in that great contest of four men versus the Rest of England, it was theRest of England that went down; for Fort Chabrol stood its ground andquietly laughed. They were never beaten, they never surrendered. Whenthey had had enough, they just burnt the house over themselves, and . . . Hara-kiri. . . . Of course, it was all very wicked; it is impossible tojustify them in any way. In Bayswater and all other haunts of unbridledchastity they were tortured, burnt alive, stewed in oil, and submittedto every conceivable penalty for their saucy effrontery. Yet, somehow, there was a touch about it, this spectacle of four men defying the lawand order of the greatest country in the world, which thrilled every manwith any devil in him. Peter the Painter is a hero to this day. 

 * * * * *

I had known the quarter for many years before it interested me. It wasnot until I was prowling around on a Fleet Street assignment that Ilearnt to hate it. A murder had been committed over a café in LupinStreet: a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and with a sexinterest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuousanxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to thatend. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a publicspirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which Iwas a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, andthe editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs forthe London Letter, do something good on the Vassiloff murder. 

It was a night of cold rain, and the pavements were dashed with smearsof light from the shop windows. Through the streaming streets my hansomleaped; and as I looked from the window, and noted the despondentbiliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that the grass withereth, theflower fadeth. 

I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, continuing the tradition whichhad been instilled into me by my predecessor on the London Letter, Iturned into one of the hostelries and had a vodka to keep the cold out. Little Russia was shutting up. The old shawled women, who sit at everycorner with huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, were departingbeneath umbrellas. The stalls of Osborn Street, usually dressed withforeign-looking confectionery, were also retiring. Indeed, everybodyseemed to be slinking away, and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burnme with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all publics which desired toread about murders. I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the leastgood; so I had another, and gazed through the kaleidoscopic window, rushing with rain, at the cheerful world that held me. 

Oh, so sad it is, this quarter! By day the streets are a depression, with their frowzy doss-houses and their vapour-baths. Grey and sickly isthe light. Grey and sickly, too, are the leering shops, and grey andsickly are the people and the children. Everything has followed thegrass and the flower. Childhood has no place; for above the roofs youmay see the sharp points of a Council School. Such games as happen areplayed but listlessly, and each little face is smirched. The gauntwarehouses hardly support their lopping heads, and the low, beetling, gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to brood on nights of bitteradventure. Fit objects for contempt by day they may be, but when nightcreeps upon London, the hideous darkness that can almost be touched, then their faces become very powers of terror, and the cautious soul, wandered from the comfort of the main streets, walks and walks in afrenzy, seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes a hoarse laugh willbreak sharp on his ear. Then he runs. 

Well, I finished my second, and then sauntered out. As I was passing acruel-looking passage, a gang of lads and girls stepped forward. One ofthe girls looked at me. Her face had the melancholy of Russia, but hervoice was as the voice of Cockaigne. For she spoke and said--

"Funny-looking little guy, ain't you?"

I suppose I was. So I smiled and said that we were as God made us. 

She giggled. . . . 

I said I felt sure I should do no good on the Vassiloff murder. Ididn't. For just then the other four marched ahead, crying, "Come on!"And, surprised, yet knowing of no good reason for being surprised, Ifelt the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined the main column. 

That is one of London's greatest charms: it is always ready to toss youlittle encounters of this sort, if you are out for them. 

Across the road we went, through mire and puddle, and down a long, winding court. At about midway our friends disappeared, and, suddenlydrawn to the right, I was pushed from behind up a steep, fusty stair. Then I knew where we were going. We were going to the tenements wheremost of the Russians meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these placesis a little more cheerful than that of the cafés--if you can imagine aRussian ever rising to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over themilliners' shops, and thither their friends resort. Every establishmenthere has a piano, for music, with them, is a sombre passion rather thana diversion. You will not hear comic opera, but if you want to climb thelost heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and listen to a piano, lostin the high glooms, wailing the heart of Chopin or Rubinstein orGlazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist girls, while the ghost ofPeter the Painter parades the naphthaed highways. 

At the top of the stair I was pushed into a dark, fusty room, and guidedto a low, fusty sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, and a lampwas lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radianceon its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls andboys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently verymuch at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on thebed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in Cockney toughs. Idoubt if you would have admired the girls at that moment. 

The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then broughta tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watchingthe others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon theladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes. 

The room, on which the wallpaper hung in dank strips, contained afull-sized bed and a chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, apot-pourri of a carpet, and certain mysteries of feminine toilet. Arickety three-legged table stood by the window, and Katarina's robeshung in a dainty riot of frill and colour behind the door, which onlyshut when you thrust a peg of wood through a wired catch. 

One of the girls went to the piano and began to play. You would notunderstand, I suppose, the intellectual emotion of the situation. It ismore than curious to sit in these rooms, in the filthiest spot inLondon, and listen to Mozskowsky, Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by afactory girl. It is . . . Something indefinable. I had visited similarplaces in Stepney before, but then I had not had a couple of vodkas, andI had not been taken in tow by an unknown gang. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and sometimes vodka or whisky go round; and asthe room gets warmer, so does one's sense of smell get sharper; so dothe pale faces get moister; and so does one long more and more for abreath of cold air from the Ural Mountains. The best you can do is toascend to the flat roof, and take a deep breath of Spitalfields ozone. Then back to the room for more tea and more music. 

Sanya played. . . . Despite the unventilated room, the greasyappointments, and other details that would have turned the stomach ofKensington, that girl at the piano, playing, as no one would havedreamed she could play, the finer intensities of Wieniawski andMoussorgsky, shook all sense of responsibility from me. The burdens oflife vanished. News editors and their assignments be damned. Enjoyyourself, was what the cold, insidious music said. 

Devilish little fingers they were, Sanya's. Her technique was notperhaps all that it might have been; she might not have won the GoldMedal of our white-shirted academies, but she had enough temperament tomake half a dozen Steinway Hall virtuosi. From valse to nocturne, fromsonata to prelude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords she dropped from"L'Automne Bacchanale" to the Nocturne in E flat; scarcely murmured ofthat, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's Waltz, and from that shedropped to a song of Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its childishbeauty, and then to the austere music of the second act of "Tristan. "Mazurka, polonaise, and nocturne wailed in the stuffy chamber; herlittle hands lit up the enchanted gloom of the place with brightthrills. 

But suddenly there came a whisper of soft feet on the landing, and asecret tap at the door. Some one opened it, and slipped out. One heardthe lazy hum of voices in busy conversation. Then silence; and some oneentered the room and shut the door. One of the boys asked casually, "What's up?" His question was not answered, but the girl who had gone tothe door snapped something in a sharp tone which might have been eitherRussian or Yiddish. The other girls sat up and spat angry phrases about. I called to one of the boys--"What's the joke? Anything wrong?" andreceived reply--

"Owshdiknow? Ain't a ruddy Russian, am I?"

The girl at the door spoke in a hoarse whisper: "'Ere--you bettergo--you first?"

"Whaffor?" asked the boys. 

"'Cos I say so. "

"No, but----"

Again there came a stealthy tap at the door, again the whispering ofslippered feet. More words were exchanged. Then Sanya grabbed the boysby arms, and they and the girls disappeared. 

I was alone. 

I got up, and moved to the door. I heard nothing. I stood by the window, my thoughts dancing a ragtime. I wondered what to do, and how, andwhether. I wondered what was up exactly. I wondered . . . Well, I justwondered. My thoughts got into a tangle, sank, and swam, and sank again. Then there was a sudden struggle and spurt from the lamp, and it wentblack out. From a room across the landing a clock ticked menacingly. Isaw, by the thin light from the window, the smoke of a discardedcigarette curling up and up to the ceiling like a snake. 

I went again to the door, peered down the steep stair and over the crazybalustrade. Nobody was about; no voices. I slipped swiftly down the fiveflights, met nobody. I stood in the slobbered vestibule. From afar Iheard the sluck of the waters against the staples of the wharves, andthe wicked hoot of the tugs. 

It was then that a sudden nameless fear seized me; it was that simpleterror that comes from nothing but ourselves. I am not usually afraid ofany man or thing. I am normally nervous, and there are three or fourthings that have the power to terrify me. But I am not, I think, afraid. At that moment, however, I was afraid of everything: of the room I hadleft, of the house, of the people, of the inviting lights of thewarehouses and the threatening shoals of the alleys. 

I stood a moment longer. Then I raced into Brick Lane, and out into thebrilliance of Commercial Street. 

A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT

SHADWELL

_AT SHADWELL_

 _He was a bad, glad sailor-man, Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare-o! You never could find a haler man, Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare! All human wickedness he knew. From Millwall Docks to Pi-chi-lu; He loved all things that make us gay, He'd spit his juice ten yards away, And roundly he'd declare--oh! "It isn't so much that I want the beer As the bloody good company, Whow! Bloody good company!"_

 _He loved all creatures--black, brown, white, Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare-o! And never a word he'd speak in spite, Tan-ta-ta-ran-tan-tare! He knew that we were mortal men Who sinned and laughed and sinned again; And never a cruel thing he'd do At Millwall Docks or Pi-chi-lu; If you were down he'd make you gay: He'd spit his juice ten yards away, And roundly he'd declare--oh! "It isn't so much that I want yer beer As yer bloody good company, Whow! Bloody good company!"_

A SCANDINAVIAN NIGHT

SHADWELL

One night, when I was ten years old, I was taken by a boy who was oldenough to have known better into the ashy darkness of Shadwell and St. George's. Along that perilous mile we slipped, with drumming hearts. Then a warm window greeted us . . . Voices . . . Gruff feet . . . Bits ofstrange song . . . And then an open door and a sharp slab of mellow light. With a sense of high adventure we peeped in. Some one beckoned. Weentered. The room was sawdusted as to the floor, littered with woodentables and benches. All was sloppy with rings and pools of spent cocoa. The air was a conflict: the frivolous odour of fried sausage coylyflirted with the solemn smell of dead smoke, and between them they borea bastard perfume of stale grease. Coffee-urns screamed and belched. Cakes made the counter gay. 

We stood for a moment, gazing, wondering. Then the blond-bearded giantwho had beckoned repeated his invitation; indeed, he reached a huge arm, seized me, and set me on his knee. I lost all sense of ownership of myface in the tangles of his beard. He hiccuped. He coughed. He rattled. He sneezed. His forearms and fingers flew, as though repellingmultitudinous attacks. His face curled, and crinkled, and slipped, andjumped suddenly straight again, and then vanished in infinitecorrugations. He seemed to be in the agony of a lost soul which seeks tocleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff. . . . Arms and lipslashed the air about them, and at last the very lines of his body seemedexpressive of the state of a man who has explained himself forty-fivetimes, and is then politely asked to explain himself. For half an hour, I suppose, I sat on his knee while he sneezed and roared and playedgames with his vocal cords. 

It was not until next morning that I learnt that he had been speakingNorwegian and trying to ask me to have a cake. When I knew that I hadbeen in the lair of the Scandinavian seamen, I thrilled. When I learntthat I had lost a cake, I felt sad. 

It is a curious quarter, this Shadwell and St. George's: a street ofmission-halls for foreign sailors and of temperance restaurants, such asthat described, mostly for the Scandinavians, though there are manyshops catering for them still farther East. Sometimes you may hear along, savage roar, but there is no cause for alarm. It is only that thegreat Mr. Jamrach, London's leading dealer in wild animals, has hismenagerie in this street. 

The shop-fronts are lettered in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Strangeprovisions are found in the "general" shops, and quaintly carved goodsand long wooden pipes in other windows. Marine stores jostle oneanother, shoulder to shoulder, and there is a rich smell of tar, bilge-water, and the hold of a cargo tramp. Almost you expect to hearthe rattle of the windlass, as you stand in the badly lightedestablishment of Johann Dvensk, surrounded by ropes, old ship's iron, bloodthirsty blades, canvas, blocks, and pulleys. Something in thisnarrow space seizes you, and you feel that you must "Luff her!" or"Starrrrrb'd yer Helllllllm!" or "Ease 'er!" or "Man the tops'l!" orwhatever they do and say on Scandinavian boats. You may see these boatsin the Pool any night; timber boats they are, for the most part; squat, low-lying affairs, but curiously picturesque when massed close withother shipping, steam or sail. One of our London songsters has recordedthat "there's always something doing by the seaside"; and that isequally true of down Thames-side. London River is always alive withbeauty, splendid with stress and the sweat of human hands. There issomething infinitely saddening in watching the casual, business-likedeparture of one of these big boats. As she swings away and dropsdownstream, her crew, idling, lean over the side, and spit, smokingtheir long Swedish pipes, and looking curiously unearthly as the docklights fall, now on one, now on the other. I always want to plunge intothe water and follow them through that infinitude of travel which issuggested by the dim outline of Greenwich. 

The lamps in Shadwell High Street and what was once Ratcliff Highway arefew and very pale; and each one, welcome as it is, flings shapes of fearacross your path as you leave its radius and step into darkness moreutter. The quality of the darkness is nasty. That is the only word forit. It is indefinite, leering. It says nothing to you. It is reticentwith the reticence of Evil. It is not black and frightful, like thedarkness of Hoxton or Spitalfields. It is not pleasant, like thedarkness of Chinatown. It is not matey, like the darkness of HackneyMarshes. It is . . . Nasty. At every ten paces there is the black mouth ofan alley with just space enough for the passage of one person. Withinthe jaws of each alley is a lounging figure--man, woman, or child, Londoner or foreigner, you cannot discern. But it is there, silent, watchful, expectant. And if you choose to venture, you may examine moreclosely. You may note that the faces that peer at you are faces such asone only sees elsewhere in the picture of Felicien Rops. Sometimes it isa curl-sweet little girl who greets you with a smile strangely cold. Sometimes the mouth of the alley will appear to open and will spit atyou, apparently by chance. If it hits you, the alley swears at you: adeep, frightfully foreign oath. Sudden doors flap, and gusts of brutaljollity sweep up the street. 

In the old days, Shadwell embraced the Oriental quarter, and times, inthe 'seventies, long before I was thought of, seem to have been reallyfrolicsome, or so I gather from James Greenwood. The chief inhabitantsof to-day are those little girls just mentioned. Walk here at any timeof the day or night, and you will find in every doorway and at thosecorners which are illuminated, clusters of little girls, all of the sameage, all of the same height, their glances knowing so much more thantheir little fresh lips imply. They seem all to be born at that age, andthey never grow up. For every boy and woman that you pass in that dustymile you will find dozens of pale little girls. There is a reason forthis local product, about which I have written more seriously elsewhere, and if you saunter here, beware of sympathy with crying children. Icould tell things; curious things. But if I did you would not believethem, and if you believed them you would be sick. 

I have mentioned the peculiar darkness. It is provocative and insistent. It possesses you. For you know that in this street, or rather, back ofit, there are the homes of the worst vices of the seagoing foreigner. Itis the haunt of the dissolute and the indigent; not only of the normalbrute, but also of the satyr. You know that behind those heights ofhouses, stretching over the street with dumb, blank faces, there arestrangely lighted rooms, where unpleasant rites are celebrated. 

I can never understand why artists and moralists paint Temptationinvariably in gaudy scarlet and jewels, tinted cheeks, and laughinghair. If she were always like that, morality would be gloriouslytriumphant; for she would attract nobody. The true Temptation of thisworld and flesh wears grey rags, dishevelled hair, and an ashen cheek. Any expert will prove that. I can never believe that any one would belured to destruction by those birds of paradise whom one has met in thestuffy, over-gilded, and, happily, abortive night-clubs and cabarets. Ifa consensus were taken, I think it would be found that wickedness gailyapparelled is seldom successful. It is the subtle and the sinister, thedark and half-known, that make the big appeal. Lace and scent andchampagne and the shaded glamour of Western establishments leave mostmen cold, I know. But dirt and gloom and secrecy. . . . We needs must lovethe lowest when we see it. 

As far back as I can remember the Eastern parishes have been, to me, thehome of Romance. My romance was not in the things of glitter andchocolate-box gaiety, but rather in the dolours and silences of theEast. Long before I had adventured there, its very streetnames--Whitechapel High Street, Ratcliff Highway, Folly Wall, StepneyCauseway, Pennyfields--had thrilled me as I believe other childrenthrill to the names of The Arabian Nights. 

That is why I come sometimes to Shadwell, and sit in its tiny beershops, and listen to the roaring of Jamrach's lions, and talk with the blondfellows whose conversation is mostly limited to the universalities ofintercourse. I was there on one occasion, in one of the houses whichare, in the majority of cases, only licensed for beer, and I made theacquaintance of a quite excellent fellow, and spent the whole eveningwith him. He talked Swedish, I talked English; and we understood oneanother perfectly. We did a "pub-crawl" in Commercial Road and EastIndia Dock Road, and finished up at the Queen's Theatre in Poplar HighStreet. A jolly evening ended, much too early for me, at one o'clock inthe morning, when he insisted on entering a lodging-house in Gill Streetbecause he was sure that it was his. I tried to make him understand, bydiagrams on the pavement, that he was some half-mile from St. George's. But no; he loomed above me, in his blond strength, and when he tried tofollow the diagram, he toppled over. I spent five minutes in lifting sixfoot three and about twelve stone of Swedish manhood to its feet. 

He looked solemn, and insisted: "I ban gude Swede. "

I told him again that he must not enter the lodging-house, but must letme see him safe to his right quarters. But he thrust me aside: "I bangude Swede!" he said, resentfully this time, with hauteur. I pulled hiscoat-tails, and tried to lead him back to Shadwell; but it was useless. 

"I ban gude Swede!"

There I left him, trying to climb the six steps leading to thelodging-house entrance. I looked back at the corner. He turned, to wavehis hand in valediction, and, floating across the night, came a prouddeclaration--

"I ban gude Swede!"

This is one of the few occasions when I have been gay in Shadwell. Mostly you cannot be gay; the place simply won't let you be gay. Youcannot laugh there spontaneously. You may hear bursts of filthy laughterfrom this or that low-lit window; but it is not spontaneous. You onlylaugh like that when you have nine or ten inside you. The spirit of theplace does not, in the ordinary way, move you to cheer. Its mist, andits dust-heaps, and its coal-wharves, and the reek of the river sinkinto you, and disturb your peace of mind. 

Most holy night descends never upon Shadwell. The night life of anydockside is as vociferant as the day. They slumber not, nor sleep inthis region. They bathe not, neither do they swim; and Cerberus in allhis hideousness was not arrayed like some of these. If you want to makeyour child good by terror, show him a picture of a Swede or a Malay, pickled in brown sweat after a stoking-up job. 

Of course, the seamen of St. George's do not view it from this angle. Shadwell is only fearful and gloomy to those who have fearful and gloomyminds. Seamen haven't. They have only fearful and gloomy habits. Probably, when the evening has lit the world to slow beauty, and a quartor so has stung your skin to a galloping sense of life, Shadwell HighStreet and its grey girls are a garden of pure pleasure. I shouldn'twonder. 

There are those among them who love Shadwell. A hefty seafaring Danewhom I once met told me he loved the times when his boat brought him toLondon--by which, of course, he meant Shadwell. He liked the life andthe people and the beer. And, indeed, for those who do love any part ofLondon, it is all-sufficient. I suppose there are a few people livinghere who long to escape from it when the calendar calls Spring; to kisstheir faces to the grass; to lose their tired souls in tangles of greenshade. But they are hardly to be met with. Those rather futile fieldsand songs of birds and bud-spangled trees are all very well, if you havethe narrow mind of the Nature-lover; but how much sweeter are the thingsof the hands, the darling friendliness of the streets! The maidenlymonth of April makes little difference to us here. We know, by thecalendar and by our physical selves, that it is the season of song andquickening blood. Beyond London, amid the spray of orchard foam, birdand bee may make their carnival; lusty spring may rustle in thehedgerows; golden-tasselled summer may move along the shadow-frettedmeadows; but what does it say to us? Nothing. . . . Here we still gamble, and worship the robustious things that come our way, and wait to find aboat. We have no seasons. We have no means of marking the delicate pompof the year's procession. We have not even the divisions of day andnight, for, as I have said, boats must sail at all hours of the day andnight, and their swarthy crews are ever about. In Shadwell we have onlymore seamen or less seamen. Summer is a spell of stickiness and Winter atime of fog. Season of flower and awakening be blowed! I'll have thesame again!

This is a book of adventures in and about London: not a sociologicalpamphlet; but I do seriously feel that if I am writing on the subject atall, I may as well write the complete truth. I have heard, often, inthis macabre street, the most piercing of all sounds that the Londonnight can hold: a child's scream. The sound of a voice in pain or terroris horrible enough anywhere at night; it is twenty times worse in thisdistrict, when the voice is a child's. I want, very badly, to tell thestory I refrained from telling. I want to tell it because it is true, because it ought to be told, and because it might shake you into somekind of action, which newspaper reports would never do. Yet I knowperfectly well that if I did tell it, this book would be condemned asunclean, and I as a pornographist, if not something worse. So let ourfatuous charity-mongers continue to supply Flannel Underclothing for theDaughters of Christian Stevedores; let them continue to provide GoodWholesome Meals for the Wifes of God-Fearing Draymen, and let themconnive by silence at those other unspeakable things. 

The University men and the excellent virgins who carry out this kind ofpatronage might do well to drop it for a while, and tell the plain truthabout the things which they must see in the course of their labours. Ifyou stand in Leicester Square, in the gayest quarter of the gayest cityin the world, after nightfall, indeed, long after theatres, bars, andmusic-halls are closed, and their saucy lights extinguished, you willsee, on the south side, a single lamp glowing through the green of thebranches. That lamp is shining the whole night through. The door that itlights is never closed day or night; it dare not close. Through theleafy gloom of the Square it shines--a watchful eye regarding thefoulest blot on the civilization of England. It is the lamp of theoffice of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toChildren. This Society keeps five hundred workers incessantly busy, dayand night, preventing cruelty to little English children. Go in, andlisten to some of the stories that the inspectors can tell you. They cantell you of appalling sufferings inflicted on children, of bruisedbodies and lacerated limbs and poisoned minds, not only in the submergedquarters but in comfortable houses by English people of education andposition. Buy a few numbers of the Society's official organ, _TheChild's Guardian_, and read of the hundreds of cases which they attackevery month, and of the bestialities to which children are submitted, and you will then see that light as the beacon-light of England'sdisgrace. I once showed it to a Spanish friend, and he looked at me withpolite disgust. "And your countrymen, my friend, " he said, "speak of theSpaniards as cruel. Your countrymen, who gather themselves in dozens, protected by horses and dogs, to hunt a timid fox, call us cruel becausewe fight the bull--because our toreadors risk their lives every momentthat they are in the ring, fighting a savage, maddened animal five timeslarger and stronger than themselves. You call us cruel--you, who have tofound a Society in order to stop cruelty to your little children. Myfriend, there is no society like that in Spain, for no society like thatis necessary. The most depraved Spaniard, town or countryman, wouldnever dream of raising his hand against a child. And your countrymen, inface of that building, which is open day and night, and supports a staffof five hundred, call the Spaniards cruel! My friend, yours surely mustbe the cruellest people on earth. "

And I had no answer for him, because I knew. I knew what Mr. Robert Parrhad told me: and I knew why little girls of twelve and thirteen areabout the dripping mouths of the Shadwell alleys at all queer hours. Youwill understand why some men, fathers of little girls, suddenly havemoney for beer when a foreign boat is berthed. You will appreciate whatit is that twists its atmosphere into something anomalous. You rememberthe gracious or jolly fellows you have met, the sweet, rich sea-chantiesyou have heard; and then you remember other things, and the peoplesuddenly seem monstrous, the spirit of the place bites deep, and thedreadful laughter of it shocks. 

A SUNDAY NIGHT

ANYWHERE

_SUNDAY TEA-TIME_

 _There is a noise of winkles on the air, Muffins and winkles rattle down the road, The sluggish road, whose hundred houses stare One on another in after-dinner gloom. _ "Peace, perfect Peace!" _wails an accordion, _ "Ginger, you're barmy!" _snarls a gramophone. _

 _A most unhappy place, this leafless Grove In the near suburbs; not a place for tears Nor for light laughter, for all life is chilled With the unpurposed toil of many years. But once--ah, once!--the accordion's wheezy strains Led my poor heart to April-smelling lanes. _

A SUNDAY NIGHT

ANYWHERE

There is something almost freakish in the thoughtful calm of the LondonSunday. During the night the town seems to have cleaned and preeneditself, and the creamy, shadow-fretted streets of the Sabbath belongmore to some Southern region than to Battersea or Barnsbury. The veryhouses have a detached, folded manner, like volumes of abstrusetheological tracts. From every church tower sparks of sound leap out onthe expectant air, mingling and clashing with a thousand others; and thepurple spires fling themselves to heaven with the joy of a perfectthought. In the streets there is an atmosphere of best clothes and bestmanners. There is a flutter of bright frocks. Father, in his black coatand silk hat, walks seriously, as befits one with responsibilities, whattime mother at home is preparing the feast. The children, poor darlings, do not skip or jump or laugh. They walk sedately, in their starchyattire, holding father's arm and trying to realize that it really isSunday, and therefore very sinful to fling oneself about. The peopletaking their appetite stroll before midday dinner look all so sleek andcomplacent that one would like to borrow money from them. The 'busesrumble with a cheeriness that belongs not to weekdays; their handrailsgleam with a new brightness, and the High Street, with shops shutteredand barred, bears not the faintest resemblance to the High Street youknow so well, even as policemen, with helmets and tunics, looksurprisingly unlike human beings. The water-carts seem to work withcleaner, lighter water, and as the sun catches the sprayed stream itwhips it into a thousand drops of white fire. It is Sunday. The roadsare blazing with white ribbons under the noon sun. A stillness broodsover all, a stillness only accentuated by the brazen voice of theSalvation Army band and the miserable music of winkles rattling ondinner-plates. The colours of the little girls' dresses slash the greybackgrounds of the pavement with rich streaks. Spears of sunshine, darting through the sparse plane-trees, play all about them, and ringthem with radiance; and they look so fresh and happy that you want tokiss them. It is Sunday. 

Yes, it is Sunday, and you will realize that as the day wears on. Thesepleasant people are walking about the streets for a very definitereason. What is that? It is that there is nothing else to do. That isthe tragedy of the London Sunday; there is nothing else to do. Why doesthe submerged man get drunk on Sunday? There is nothing else to do. Whydoes the horse-faced lady, with nice clothes, go to church on Sunday?There is nothing else to do. Why do people overeat themselves on Sunday?There is nothing else to do. Why do parents make themselves stiff anduncomfortable in new clothes, and why do they get irritable and smacktheir children if they rouse them from their after-dinner sleep? Becausethere is nothing else to do. Why does the young clerk hang around theWest End bars, and get into trouble with doubtful ladies? Because thereis nothing else to do. 

And in the evening you feel this more terribly. If it is summer, you maylisten to blatant bands in our very urban parks, which have beenthoughtfully and artistically "arranged" by stout gentlemen on theLondon County Council, whose motto seems to be: "Let's have something we_all_ know!" or you may go for a 'bus-ride to Richmond, Hampton Court, St. Albans, or Uxbridge, or Epping Forest. If you want to know, merelyfor information, to what depths London can sink in the way of amusingitself on Sundays, then I recommend the bands in the parks. Otherwisethere is something to be said for the 'bus-ride. You cannot enjoyyourself in London on the Lord's Day, but you can take London with youinto some lonely spot and there re-create it. Jump on the Chingford 'busany Sunday evening, and let yourself go with the crowd. Out in theglades of the Forest things are happening. The dappled shades of thewood flash with colour and noise, and, if you are human, you will soonhave succumbed to the contagion of the carnival. Voices of allvarieties, shrill, hoarse, and rich, rise in the heavy August air, outside "The Jolly Wagoners, " and the jingle of glasses and the poppingof corks compete with the professional hilarity of the vendors ofnovelties. Here and there bunches of confetti shoot up, whirling andglimmering; elsewhere a group of girls execute the cake-walk or thecan-can, their van sustaining fusillade after fusillade of the forbiddensquirters, their rear echoing to "chi-ikes, " catcalls, and otherappreciations, until an approaching motor-'bus scatters them insquealing confusion. By the bridge, the blithe, well-bittenBacchanalians offer to fight one another, and then decide to kiss. Thebabble of talk and laughter becomes a fury; the radiant maidens and thebold boys become the eternal tragedy. Sometimes there is a dance, andthe empurpled girls are "taken round" by their masterful squires, thesteps of the dance involving much swirling of green, violet, pink, andazure petticoats. 

But afar in the Forest there is Sabbath peace, the sound of far bells, the cry of the thrush, the holy pattering of leaves. The beeches, meeting aloft and entwining, fling the light and the spirit of thecathedral to the mossy floors. Here is purity and humanity. The airbeats freshly on the face. Away in the soft blue distance is a shadowysuggestion of rolling country, the near fields shimmering under thesweet, hot sky of twilight, and the distant uplands telling of calm anddeep peace in other places. Truly a court of love, and truly loved bythose who, for an hour or so, dwell in it. Tread lightly, you that pass. It may move you to mirth, but there is nothing mirthful here; only theeternal sorrow and the eternal joy. Perchance you do not make love inthis way; but love is love. . . . Under every brooding oak recline the raptcouples, snatching their moments in this velvety green. Drowsy fragranceis everywhere. The quiet breeze disorders stray ringlets, and sometimeslight laughter is carried sleepily to sleepy ears. Love, says an oldMalayan chanty which I learned at West India Dock--Love is kind to theleast of men. God will it so!

But if it be winter, then the Londoner is badly hit on Sundays. Thecafés and bars are miserable, deserted by their habitués and full onlyof stragglers from the lost parts, who have wandered here unknowingly. The waiters are off their form. They know their Sunday evening clientèleand they despise it; it is not the real thing. The band is off its form. The kitchen is off its form. It is Sunday. 

There are no shows of any kind, unless it be some "private performance"of the Stage Society, for which tickets have to be purchased in theweek. Certainly there are, in some of the West End and most of thesuburban halls, the concerts of the National Sunday League, but theorchestras and the singers are really not of a kind to attract themusical temperament. The orchestras play those hackneyed bits of Wagnerand Tchaikowsky and Rossini of which all the world must be everlastinglysick, and the singers sing those tiresome songs which so satisfy themusical taste of Bayswater--baritone songs about the Army and the Navyand their rollicking ways, and about old English country life; tenorsongs about Grey Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and Coming Back;soprano songs about Calling and Wondering and Last Night's Dance andRemembering and Forgetting--foolish words, foolish melodies, and clumsyorchestration. But they seem to please the well-dressed crowd thatcomes to listen to them, so I suppose it is justified. I suppose itreally interprets their attitude toward human passion. I don't know. . . . Anyway, it is sorry stuff. 

If you don't go to these shows, then there is nothing to do but walkabout. I think the most pathetic sight to be seen in London is theStrand on a Sunday night. The whole place is shut up, almost one mightsay, hermetically sealed, except that Mooney's and Ward's and Romano'sare open. Along its splendid length parade crowds and crowds of Jewcouples and other wanderers from the far regions. They look lost. Theylook like a Cup Tie crowd from the North. They don't walk; they drift. They look helpless; they have an air expressive of: "Well, what thedevil shall we do _now_?" I have a grim notion that members of theLondon County Council, observing them--if, that is, members of theLondon County Council ever do penance by walking down the Strand onSunday--take to themselves unction. "Ah!" they gurgle in their hearts, "ah!--beautiful. Nice, orderly crowd; all walking about nice andorderly; enjoying themselves in the right way. Ah! Yes. We _like_ to seethe people enjoy themselves. "

And, in their Christian way, they pat themselves on the back (if not toostout) and go home to their cigars and liqueurs and whatever else theymay want in the way of worldly indulgence. It is Sunday. 

Some years ago there was a delightful song that devastated New York. Itwas a patriotic song, and it was called: "The sun is always shining onBroadway. " At the time, I translated this into English, for rendering ata private show, the refrain being that the sun is always shining in theStrand. So it is. Dull as the day may be elsewhere, there is alwayslight of some kind in the Strand. It is the gayest, most Londonishstreet in London. It is jammed with Life, for it is the High Street ofthe world. Men of every country and clime have walked down the Strand. Whatever is to be found in other streets in other parts of the world isto be found in the Strand. It is the homeliest, mateyest street in theworld. Let's all go down it!

But not--not, my dears, on Sundays. For a wise County Council hasdecreed that whatsoever things are gay, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are human and lovely--these things shall not bethought upon on Sundays. 

 * * * * *

The English Sunday at home is in many cases even worse than the Sundayout. Of course it has considerably improved since the hideous eighties, but there are still survivals of the old Sabbath, not so much among themass of the people as among the wealthy. The new kindly Sabbath hasarisen with the new attitude of children towards parents. The childrenof the £300-a-year parents are possessed of a natural pluck which islacking in the children of the £3, 000-a-year. They know what they wantand they usually see that they get it. 

Among the kindlier folk, in the suburbs, Sunday is the only day whenFather is really at home with the children, and it is made the most of. It is the children's day. Morning, afternoon, and evening are given upto them. In the summer there is the great treat of tea in the garden. Inthe winter tea is taken in the room that is sometimes called the"drawing-room" by Mother and the "reception-room" by the house-agent;and there are all manner of delicate cakes and, perhaps, muffins, whichthe youngsters are allowed to toast themselves. 

After tea, Father romps with them, or reads to them from one of theirown books or magazines; or perhaps they roast chestnuts on the hearth, or sing or recite to the "company. " Too, they are allowed to sit up anhour or so later, and in this last hour every kind of pagan amusement isset going for their delight, so that they tumble at last to bed flushedwith laughter, and longing for the six days to pass so that Sunday shallcome again. 

That is one domestic Sunday. But there are others. I like to think thatthere are only about three others, but unfortunately I know that thereare over two thousand Sundays just like the one which I describe below. 

Here Father and Mother are very successful, so successful that they livein a big house near Queen's Gate, and keep five servants as well as amotor-car. Sunday is a little different here from week-days, in that thechildren are allowed to spend the day outside the nursery, with theirparents. They go to church in the morning with Mother and Father. Theydine at midday with Mother and Father. In the afternoon they go to TheChildren's Service. They have tea in the drawing-room with Mother andFather. Father and Mother are Calvinists. 

In the evening, Father and Mother sit, one on either side of the hearth;Father reading a weekly religious paper devoted to the creed of Calvin;Mother reading another religious paper devoted to the creed of Calvin. Throughout the day the children are never allowed to sing or hum anytune that may be called profane. They are never allowed to hop, skip, orjump. They are told that Jesus will not be pleased with them if they do. They are not allowed to read secular books or look at pagan pictures. Inthe afternoon, they are given Doré's Bible and an illustrated "ParadiseLost" or "Pilgrim's Progress. " In the evening, after tea (which carrieswith it one piece of seed-cake as a special treat), they are seated, with injunctions to silence, at the table, away from the fire, and setto finding Bible texts from one given keyword. The one who finds mosttexts gets a cake to go to bed with; the other gets nothing. 

So Ethel and Johnnie are at work, from six in the evening until nineo'clock, scratching through a small-type Bible for flavourlessaphorisms. Ethel is set to find six texts, and finds four of them, whenshe perceives something funny in one of them. She shows it to Johnnie, and they both giggle. Father looks up severely, and warns her. ThenJohnnie, not to be outdone, remembers something he has heard about atschool, and hunts through the Book of Kings to find it. He finds it. Itis funnier still; and he shows it to Ethel. She giggles again. Fatherlooks up reprovingly at her. She tries to maintain composure of face, but just then Johnnie pinches her knee, so that she squeals withlong-pent-up laughter. 

Father and Mother get up. Her Bible is taken from her. Her pencil andpaper are taken from her. She is made to stand on the hearthrug, withher hands behind her, while Mother and Father lecture her on Blasphemy. The bell is then rung, and Nurse is sent for. She is handed over toNurse, with pitiless instructions. Nurse then takes her to her room, where she is undressed, put to bed, and severely slapped. 

It is Sunday. . . . Over her little bed is a text in letters of flame:"_Thou God seest me!_" After burning with indignation and humiliationfor some time, she falls at last to sleep, with an unspoken prayer ofthanksgiving to her Heavenly Father that to-morrow is Monday. 

AT RANDOM

_TWO IN A TAXI_

 _From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green, We flash through misty fields of light. Oh, many lovely things are seen From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green! We reign together, king and queen, Over the lilied London night. From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green, We flash through misty fields of light. _

 _So, driver, drive your taxi well To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square. This dreaming night may cast a spell; So, driver, drive your taxi well. I have a wondrous tale to tell: Immortal Love is now your fare! So, driver, drive your taxi well To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square!_

AT RANDOM

I originally planned this chapter to cover A German Night amid the twoGerman colonies of Great Charlotte Street and Highbury; but I have anotion that the public has read all that it wants to read about Germansin London. Anyway, neither spot is lovable. I have never been able todetermine whether the Germans went to Highbury and the Fitzroy regionsbecause they found their atmosphere ready-made, or whether the districtshave acquired their atmosphere from the German settlers. Certainly theyhave everything that is most Germanically oppressive: mist, large women, lager and leberwurst, and a moral atmosphere of the week before lastthat conveys to the mind the physical sensations of undigested coldsausage. So I was leaving Great Charlotte Street, and its Kaiser, its_kolossal_ and its _kultur_, to hop on the first motor-'bus that passed, and let it take me where it would--a favourite trick of mine--when I raninto Georgie. 

I have mentioned Georgie before. Georgie is one of London's echoes--oneof those sturdy Bohemians who stopped living when Sala died. If youfrequent the Strand or Fleet Street or Oxford Street you probably knowhim by sight. He is short. He wears a frock-coat, buttoned at the waistand soup-splashed at the lapels. His boots are battered, his trousersthreadbare. He carries jaunty eye-glasses, a jaunty silk hat, and shavesonce a week. He walks with both hands in trousers pockets and feetout-splayed. The poor laddie is sadly outmoded, but he doesn't know it. He still lunches on a glass of stout and biscuit-and-cheese at "The BunShop" in the Strand. He stills drinks whisky at ten o'clock in themorning. He still clings to the drama of the sixties, and he stilladdresses every one as Laddie or My Dear. 

He hailed me in Oxford Street, and cried: "Where now, laddie, wherenow?"

"I don't know, " I said. "Anywhere. "

"Then I'll come with you. "

So we wandered. It was half-past seven. The night was purple, andthrough a gracious mist the lights glittered with subdued brilliance. London was in song. Cabs and 'buses and the evening crowd made itsmusic. I heard it calling me. So did Georgie. With tacit sympathy welinked arms and strolled westwards, and dropped in at one of the bigbars, and talked. 

We talked of the old days--before I was born. Georgie told me of thecrowd that decorated the place in the nineties: that company offeverish, foolish verbal confectioners who set themselves Byronically toruin their healths and to write self-pitiful songs about the ruins. Halfa dozen elegant Sadies and Mamies were at the American end of the bar, with their escorts, drinking Horse's Necks, Maiden's Prayers, Mother'sMilks, Manhattans, and Scotch Highballs. Elsewhere the Cockney revellerswere drinking their eternal whisky-and-sodas or beers, and theirsalutations led Georgie to a disquisition on the changing toasts of thelast twenty years. To-day it is something short and sharp: either"Hooray!" or "Here's fun!" or "Cheero!" or a non-committal "Wow-wow!"Ten years back it was: "Well, Laddie, here's doing it again!" or "Goodhealth, old boy, and may we get all we ask for!" And ten years beforethat it was something even more grandiloquent. 

From drink we drifted to talking about food; and I have already told youhow wide is Georgie's knowledge of the business of feeding in London. Weboth hate the dreary, many-dished dinners of the hotels, and we bothlove the cosy little chop-houses, of which a few only now remain: one ortwo in Fleet Street, and perhaps half a dozen in the little alleys offCornhill and Lombard Street. I agree, too, with Georgie in deploring thepassing of the public-house mid-day ordinary. From his recollections, Ilearn that the sixties and seventies were the halcyon days forfeeding--indeed, the only time when Londoners really lived; and anelderly uncle of mine, who, at that time, went everywhere and kneweverybody in the true hard-up Bohemia, tells me that there were thentwenty or thirty taverns within fifty yards of Ludgate Circus, where theshilling ordinary was a feast for an Emperor, and whose interiorsanswered to that enthusiastic description of Disraeli's in_Coningsby_--perhaps the finest eulogy of the English inn ever written. 

Unhappily, they are gone to make way for garish, reeking hotels andrestaurants for which one has to dress. Those that remain are meredrinking-places; you can, if you wish, get a dusty sandwich, but thebarmaid regards you as an idiot if you ask for one. But there areexceptions. 

"The Cock, " immortalized by Tennyson, is one of the few survivals of thesimple, and its waiters are among the best in London. As a rule, theEnglish waiter is bad and the foreign waiter is good. But when you get agood English waiter you get the very best waiter in the world. There isAlbert--no end of a good fellow. He shares with all English waiters afine disregard for form; yet he has that indefinable majesty which noContinental has ever yet assimilated; and he has, too, a nice sense ofthe needs of those who work in Fleet Street. You can go to Albert (thatisn't his true name) and say--

"Albert, I haven't much money to-day. What's good and what do I get mostof for tenpence?" Or "Albert--I've had a cheque to-day. What's best--anddamn the expense?" And Albert advises you in each emergency, and whetheryou tip him twopence or a shilling you receive the same polite "Muchobliged, sir!"

Georgie and I began to remember feeds we had had in London--real feeds, I mean; not "dinners, " but the kind of food you yearn for when you arehungry, and have, perhaps, only eleven pennies in your pocket. At thesetimes you are not interested in Rumpelmayer's for tea, or Romano's forlunch, or the Savoy for dinner. Nix. It's Lockhart's, The A B C. , cook-shops, coffee-stalls, cab-shelters, and the hundred other what-notfeeding-bins of London. I talked of the Welsh rarebits at "The OldBell, " the theatrical house in Wellington Street, and of the Fridaynight tripe-and-onion suppers at "The Plough, " Clapham. Georgie thoughtthat his fourpenny feed in the cab-shelter at Duncannon Street was aneasy first, until I asked him if he knew the eating-houses of the SouthLondon Road, and his hard face cracked to a smile. I was telling himhow, when I first had a definite commission from a tremendous editor, Ihad touched a friend for two shillings, and, walking home, had stoppedin the London Road and had ordered dishes which were billed on the menuas _Pudding_, _boiled and cauli_. FOLLOW _Golden Roll_; and this, cappedby a pint of hot tea, for sevenpence, when he burst into my words with--

"The South London Road, laddie? You ask _me_ if _I_ know the SouthLondon Road? Come again, boy, come again; I don't get you. " He lay backin his chair, and recited, with a half-smile: "The--South--London--Road!God, what sights for the hungry! Let's see--how do they go? Good Pull UpFor Carmen on the right. Far Famed Eel Pie and Tripe House opposite. Palace Restaurant, Noted For Sausages, next. Then The Poor Man's Friend. Then Bingo's Fish Bar. Coffee Caravanserai farther up. And--Lord!--S. P. And O. Everywhere for threepence-halfpenny. What a sight, boy! Everwalked down it at the end of a day without a meal and without a penny? Ishould say so. And nearly flung bricks through the windows--what?Sausages swimming in bubbling gravy. Or tucked in, all snug and comfy, with a blanket of mashed. Tomatoes frying themselves, and whining forthe fun of it. Onions singing. Saveloys entrenched in pease-pudding. Jellied eels and stewed tripe and eel-pies at twopence, threepence, andsixpence. Irish stew at sevenpence on the Come-Again style--as manyfollows as you want for the same money. _Do_ I know the South LondonRoad? Does a duck know the water?"

We talked of other streets in London which are filled with shop-windowsglamorous of prospect for the gourmet; and not only for the gourmet, butfor all simple-minded folk. Georgie talked of the toy-shops of Holborn. He made gestures expressive of paradisiacal delight. He is one of thefew people I know who can sympathize with my own childishness. He neversnubs my enthusiasms or my discoveries. Other friends sit heavily uponme when I display emotion over things like shops, taxicabs, dinners, drinks, railway journeys, music-halls, and cry, "Tommy--for the Lord'ssake, _shut up!_" But Georgie understands. He understands why I cacklewith delight when the new Stores Catalogue arrives. (By the way, if everI made a list of the Hundred Best Books, number one would be anIllustrated Stores Catalogue. What a wonderful bedside book it is! Thereis surely nothing so provocative to the sluggish imagination. Open itwhere you will, it fires an unending train of dreams. It is so full ofthousands of things which you simply must have and for which you have nouse at all, that you finally put it down and write a philosophic essayon The Vanity of Human Wishes, and thereby earn three guineas. Personally, I have found over a dozen short-story plots in the pages ofthe Civil Service Stores List. )

When we tired of talking, Georgie inquired what we should do _now_. Iput it: suppose we took a stroll along Bankside to London Bridge, andturned off to Bermondsey to take a taste of the dolours of the Irishcolony, and then follow the river to Cherry Gardens and cross to Wappingby the Rotherhithe Tunnel; but he said No, and gave as his reason thatthe little girls of the Irish and foreign quarters were toodistractingly lovely for him, as he is one of those unfortunates whowant every pretty thing they see and are miserable for a week if theycan't get it. His idea was to run over to Homerton. Did I know oldJumbo? Fat old Jumbo. Jumbo, who kept Jumbo's, under the arches, whereyou got cut from the joint, two veg. , buggy-bolster, and cheese-roll. Idid. So to Jumbo's we went by the Stoke Newington 'bus, whose conductorshouted imperatively throughout the journey: "Aw fez pliz!" though wewere the only passengers; and on the way I made a little, soft song, theburden of which was: "I do love my table d'hôte, but O you Good Pull UpFor Carmen!"

Jumbo received us with that slow good-humour which has made his businesswhat it is. He and his assistant, Dusty, a youngster of sixty-two whocuts about like a newsboy, have worked together for so many years thatDusty frequently tells his chief not to be such a Censored fool. Jumbo'sjoints are good, and so are his steak-toad, sprouts, and baked, but hissteak-and-kidney puddings at fourpence are better. I had one of these, garnished with "boiled and tops. " Georgie had "leg, well done, chips, and batter. " I never knew a man who could do the commonplace with somuch natural dignity. He gave his order with the air of a viveurplanning a ten-course arrangement at Claridge's. He shouted for ahalf-of-bitter with the solemnity of one who commands that two bottlesof dry Monopole be put on the ice. He is, too, the only man I know whosalutes his food. I have been at dinners in Wesleyan quarters like St. John's Wood where heads of families have mumbled what they call Grace or"asking a blessing"; but I have seen nothing so simply beautiful asGeorge's obeisance to his filled plate. He bows to Irish stew as othersdip to the altar. 

While Dusty stalked a clean fork through a forest of dirty ones, Georgiefired at him questions in which I had no part. Did Dusty remember theshow at Willie's about--how many was it?--twenty years ago? What aNIGHT! Did he remember how Phil May had squirted the syphon down poorold Pitcher's neck? And Clarence . . . Clarence was fairly all out thatnight--what? And next morning--when they met Jimmy coming down the stepsof the Garrick Club--_what?_

To all of which Dusty replied: "Ah, yes, sir. I should say so. That'sthe idea, sir. Those was the days!" Then the dinner came along, and westarted on it. I prefer to be attended by Jumbo. Dusty's service ofsteak-pudding is rather in the nature of a spar. Jumbo, on the otherhand, places your plate before you with the air of one doing somethingsacramental. 

While we ate we looked out on the sad lights of Homerton, and theshadowy arches and cringing houses. A queer place, whose flavour I havenever rightly been able to catch. It is nondescript, but full ofsuggestion. Some day, probably, its message will burst upon me, and Iexpect it will be something quite obvious. The shadow of history hangsover it all. Six hundred years ago, in the velvet dusk of a summernight, Sir John Froissart galloped this way, by plaguey bad roads, andhe beguiled the tedium of his journey by making an excellent newpastourelle. But you will hear no echo of this delicious song to-day:that lies buried for ever in the yellow mists of the MS. Room at theBritish Museum. Motor-'buses will snatch you from St. James's Palace, dash you through the City, and land you, within twenty minutes, breathless and bewildered, in the very spot where Sir John climbed fromhis steed. There is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. Thereis much that is sombrely wicked, and there are numbers of unsweetenedladies attached to the churches; and if it should chance to be one ofyour bad days, you may hear, as you stand musing upon the fringe of theDowns, in place of Sir John's insouciant numbers, "Mein liebe Schwann. . . " and other trifles rendered by gramophone at an opposite villa. Butif ever it had any charms, they are gone. We may read in our historiesthat about these parts kings and princes, soldiers and wits, counselled, carolled, and caroused: but you would never think it. Too soon, I fancy, the music and the wine were done, the last word said, and the guestssent their several ways into the night. For nothing remains--nothing ofthat atmosphere which grows around every spot where people have loved, and suffered, and hated, and died; only Jumbo and a nameless spiritremain. 

It is one of the few places in town where the street-merchant survivesin all his glory. Everywhere in London, of course, we have thecoffee-stall, the cockle, whelk, and escallop stall, the oyster bar (8d. Per doz. ), the baked potato and chestnut man, and (an innovation of1914) the man in the white dress with a portable tin, selling _pommesfrites_ in grease-proof bags at a penny a time. But in Homerton, inaddition to these, you have the man with the white-metal stand, sellinga saveloy and a dab of pease-pudding for a penny, or boiled pig'strotters, or many kinds of heavy, hot cakes. 

After our orgy, we bought a sweet cake, and Georgie took me to whatlooked like a dirty little beerhouse that hid itself under one of thepassages that lead to the perilous Marshes of Hackney. We slipped into alittle bar with room for about four persons, and Georgie swung to thecounter, peremptorily smashed a glass on it, and demanded: "Crumdymunt--two!" I was expecting a new drink, but the barman seemed tounderstand, for he brought us two tiny glasses of green liqueur, lookedat Georgie, casually, then again, sharply, and said, in mild surprise, "God . . . It's old Georgie!" and then went to attend the four-ale bar. When he came back we exchanged courtesies, and bought, for ourselves andfor him, some of the sixpenny cigars of the house. We lingered over ourdrink in silence, and, for a time, nothing could be heard except thecrackling of the saltpetre in the Sunday-Afternoon Splendidos. ThenGeorgie inquired what was doing at my end, and told me of what he waswriting and of how he was amusing himself, and I told him equallyinteresting things. 

 * * * * *

It was half-past eight before Georgie and I were tired of Homerton; andhe then demanded what we should do _now_. I said: Return; and it wascarried. We went westwards, and called at Rule's for a chat with Harry, and then dropped in at The Alhambra, just in time to catch PhyllisMonkman at her Peruvian Pom-Pom dance in a costume that is surely one ofthe inspirations of modern ballet. We remained only long enough to payhomage to the young danseuse, and then drifted to those parts of theSquare where, from evening until midnight, the beasts of pleasure pacetheir cells. I have often remarked to various people on the dearth ofdecent music in our lounges and cafés. I once discussed the matter withthe _chef d'orchestre_ of the Café de l'Europe, but he confessed hisinability to reform matters. Why can't we have one place in London whereone can get drinks, or coffee if desired, and listen to really goodmusic? There is a mass of the best work that is suitable for quartet orquintet, or has been adapted for small orchestra; why is it never heard?Mr. Jacobs says that Londoners don't want it. I don't believe him. "If Iplay, " he says, "anything of Mozart or Bach or Handel or Ravel orChopin, they are impatient. They talk--ever so loud. And when it isfinished, they rush up and say: 'Play "Hitchy Koo. "' 'Play "The Girl inthe Taxi. "'" But I believe there is really a big public for a fullylicensed café with a good band which shall have a definite programme ofthe best music every evening, and stick to that programme regardless of"special requests. "

At the café where Georgie and I were lounging, the band was kept hard atwork by these Requests. They were "La Bohème" selection, "That MidnightChoo-choo, " "Tipperary, " "Tales of Hoffman" Barcarolle, "All Aboard forDixie, " "In my Harem, " and "The Ragtime Navvy. " At the first bars of theNavvy we drifted out, and fell into the arms of The Tattoo Artist, whowas taking an evening off. 

The tattoo artist is a person of some consequence. He has a knowledge ofLondon that makes most Londoners sick, and his acquaintance with queerand casual characters is illimitable. He was swollen with good food anddrink, and as he extended a strong right arm to greet us, he positivelyshed a lustre of success and power. The state of business in all tradesand professions may be heartbreakingly bad, but there is one professionin which there are no bad seasons--one that will survive and flourishuntil the world ceases to play the quaint comedy of love. All the worldloves a lover, and none more so than the tattoo artist, or, to give himhis professional name, Professor Sylvanus Ruffino, the world's champion, whose studio is in Commercial Road. When a young man of that districthas been bitten by the serpent of love, what does he do? He goes toSylvanus, and has the name of the lady, garnished with a heart or afloral cupid, engraved on his hands, arms, or chest. His "studio" is atiny shop, with a gaudy chintz curtain for door, the window decoratedwith prints of the tattooed bodies of his clients. Elsewhere about theexterior are coloured designs of Chinese dragons, floral emblems, cupids, anchors, flags, and other devices with which your skin may bebeautified at trifling cost--anything from sixpence to five shillings. 

The professor works every evening from seven to ten o'clock, in hisshirt-sleeves. In the corner of the studio is the operating-table, littered with small basins of liquid inks of various hues, and asterilizing-vessel, which receives the electric needle after each clienthas been punctured. Winter, he tells me, contradicting the poet, is hisbest time. He finds that in Shadwell and the neighbourhood the youngman's fancy turns more definitely to love in the dark evenings than inthe spring. As soon as October sets in his studio is crowded with boyswho desire the imprinting of beautiful names on their thick skins. Hecalculates that he must have tattooed the legend "Mizpah" some eightthousand times since he started in the business. Girls, too, sometimesvisit him, and demonstrate their love for their boy in a chosenmasculine way. 

To-night he had snatched a few hours in the West, and was just returninghome. It being then well past twelve, we sauntered a little way withhim, and called at a coffee-stall for a cup of the leathery tea which isthe speciality of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have their"regulars, " especially those that are so fortunate as to pitch near aWorks of any kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts of Soho, and near a large colour-printing house which was then working day andnight. I wonder, by the way, why printers always drink tea and stout inpreference to other beverages. I wonder, too, why policemen preferhard-boiled eggs above all other food. 

It is a curious crowd that gathers about the stalls. In the course of anight you may meet there every type of Londoner. You may meet policemen, chauffeurs, printers, toughs, the boy and girl who have been to agallery and want to finish the night in proper style, and--thecadgers. At about the middle of the night there is a curious breakin the company: the tone changes. Up to four o'clock it's thestay-up-all-nights; after that hour it's the get-up-earlys. One minutethere would be a would-be viveur, in sleek dress clothes; then alongcomes a cadger; then along comes a warrior from the battlefield. Then, with drowsy clatter, up comes a gang of roadmen, scavengers, railwayworkers, and so on. A little later comes the cheerful one who has made anight of it, and, somehow, managed to elude the police. He takes a cupof strong tea, demonstrates the graceful dancing of Mr. Malcolm Scott, and smashes two cups in doing it. Then up comes the sport, with a cert. For the big race to-day. Then up comes six o'clock, and the keeperpacks up, and shoves his stall to its yard. 

After a long exchange of reminiscences, we parted with the tattooartist, and I walked home with Georgie, the outmoded, who lives inVauxhall Bridge Road. I have often told him that the stiff, crinolineatmosphere of the place is the right touch for him, but he does notunderstand. It is a poor faded thing, this district; not glamorouslyold; just ridiculously out of fashion. Shops and houses are all echoesof the terrible seventies, and you seem to hear the painful wheezing ofa barrel-organ, to catch a glimpse of side-whiskers and bustles, and tobe encompassed by all the little shamefaced emotions of that periodwhich died so long ago and only haunt us now in this street and in theprovinces. 

There, on the steps of one of the silly little houses, I parted fromGeorgie and this book.