Nights in London Part 10

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 informed mind it is full and pa.s.sionate. Every one of its streets is a sharp-flavoured adventure. Where others find insipidity I find salt and fire. Its shapes and sounds and silences and colours have allured me from first acquaintance. For here, remember, are the Millwall Docks, and here, too, is Cubitt Town.... Of course, like all adorable things, it has faults. I am ready to confess that the cheap mind, which finds Beauty only in that loathly quality called Refinement, will suffer many pains 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 has been taken in hand by those remote Authorities who make life miserable for us. It is reasonably clean; it is secure; the tumbling cottages have been razed, and artisans' dwellings have arisen in their stead. Its high-ways--Glengall Road, East Ferry Road, Manchester Road--are but rows of uniform cottages, with pathetically small front gardens and frowzy "backs," which, throughout the week, flap dismally with the most intimate items of their households' underwear. Its horizon is a few grotto-like dust-shoots, decorated with old bottles and condensed-milk tins.

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

For here are many thousands of homes, and where a thousand homes are gathered together there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, my genteel lambs of Kensington, in this region of ashpits and waterways and broken s.h.i.+ps and dry ca.n.a.ls are girls and garlands and all the old lovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along its winding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, then life in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and la.s.situde, and, from the rich faces that pa.s.s you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it must always be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at the gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock of chattering magpies--the little work-girls--and see if I am not right.

And the colour.... There is nothing in the world like it for depth and glamour. I know no evenings so tender as those that gather about the Island: at once heartsome and subdued. The colour of street and sky and water, sprinkled with a million timid stars, is an ecstasy. You cannot name it. You see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, rose, silver. The clouds that flank the high-shouldered buildings and chimneys share in these subtle changes, and s.h.i.+ft and s.h.i.+ft from definite hues to some haunting scheme that was never seen in any colourman's catalogue.

On the night when I took Georgie round the Island a hard, clear frost was abroad. The skies glittered with steady stars. The streets seemed strangely wide and frank, clear-cut, and definite. A fat-faced moon lighted 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 it thoroughly. As we stood on the shuddering bridge the clear night spread such a stillness over the place that you could almost hear a goods train shunt; and we stood there watching the berthing of a big P. & O. for many pensive minutes.

By the way, you ought to know Georgie; he is a London character. Perhaps you do, for he has thousands of acquaintances. He knows all that there is to know about London--or, at least, the real London, by which phrase I exclude the foreign quarters and the Isle of Dogs. These he does not regard as part of London. His acquaintance among waiters alone is a matter for wonder. At odd times you may meet him in a bar with a stranger, an impressive-looking personage who, you conjecture, is an attache of a foreign Emba.s.sy. But no; you do him an injustice; he is greater 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," or Henry 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 in London. I don't mean that he could seriously compete with Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham Davis. He couldn't draw up a little dinner for you at the Ritz or Claridge's or Dieudonne's. But, then, here again he shows his prejudices; for he doesn't regard a dinner at the Ritz or Claridge's as anything to do with eating. His is the quieter sphere; but he has made it his own. There is something uncanny about his knowledge in this direction. He knows where you can get a meal at two o'clock in the morning, and he can tell you exactly what you will get. He can tell you in an instant what is the prime dish at any obscure little eating-house and the precise moment at which it is on the table. He knows the best house for cabbage, and the house to be avoided if you are thinking of potatoes. He knows where to go for sausage and mashed, and he can reel off a number of places which must be avoided when their haricot mutton is on. He knows when the boiled beef is most _a la mode_ at Wilkinson's, when the pudding at the "Ches.h.i.+re 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 to lunch. "Tuesday," he will murmur, "Tuesday. What d'you fancy? It's fowl-and-bacon day at 'The Mitre.' That's always good. Or it's stewed-steak day at 'The Old Bull,' near the Bank; beautiful steak; done to a turn at one-fifteen. Or it's curry day at the Oriental place in Holborn, if you like curries. Or it's chop toad-in-the-hole day at Salter's; ready at two o'clock. The one in Strand's the best. But don't go sharp at two. Wait till about two-twenty. The batter ain't quite what it should be at two sharp; but just after that it's perfect. Perfect, my boy!"

We crossed the bridge to a running accompaniment from Georgie about the times he had had in the old days before I was born or thought of--he is always flinging this in my face. Motor-'buses were roaring through the long, empty streets, carrying loads of labourers from the docks to their northern homes, or work-girls from the northern factories to their homes in the Island. The little, softly lighted toy and sweetstuff shops gleamed upon us out of the greyness, and the tins of hot saveloys and baked apples, which the hawkers were offering, smelt appetizing. From tiny stalls outside the sweetstuff shops you may still purchase those luscious delicacies of your childhood which seem to have disappeared from 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 Havana Street. I decided that we would call on the latter, so Georgie stopped at "The Regent," and took in a bottle of Red Seal for my friend and a little drop of port for the missus--"just by way," as he explained, "of being matey." My friend, a gateman at one of the dock stations, had just gone home, and was sitting down to his tea. There is no doubt that the housewives of the Island know how to prepare their old men's tea. In nearly every house in this district you will find, at about six or seven o'clock, in the living-room of the establishment, a good old hot stew going, or tripe and onions, or fish and potatoes, or a meat-pudding; and this, washed down with a pint of tea, is good enough hunting for any human. Old Johnnie comes from the docks in his dirty working clothes; but before ever he ventures to sit down to table he goes into the scullery, strips, and has what he calls a "slosh down," afterwards reappearing in a clean print s.h.i.+rt and serge trousers. Then, in this comfortable attire, he attacks whatever the missus has got for him, and studies the evening paper, to ascertain, firstly, what the political (i.e. labour) situation is, and, secondly, what's good for to-morrow's big race; for Johnnie, quite innocently, likes to have a s.h.i.+lling on all the cla.s.sics--the Lincoln, the Cambridges.h.i.+re, the Caesarewitch, the Gold 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 take the missus to the pictures, or, if it is Sat.u.r.day, he will go marketing with her in Poplar, or in the summer for a moonlight sail on the Thames steamers. Other nights he attends his slate club, or his union, or drops in at one or other of the cheery bars on the Island, to meet his pals and talk shop. The Isle of Dogs, I may tell you, is a happy hunting-ground for all those unhappy creatures who can find no congenial society in their own circles: I mean superior Socialists, Christian workers, Oxford and Cambridge settlement workers, and the immature intellectuals. There are literally dozens and dozens of churches and chapels on the Island, and dozens of halls and meeting-places where lectures are given. The former do not capture Johnnie, but the latter do, and he will often wash and brush up of an evening to hear some young boy from Oxford deliver a thoroughly uninformed exposition of Karl Marx or Nietzsche. The Island is particularly happy in being so frequently patronized by those half-baked ladies and gentlemen, the Fabians, who have all the vices of the middle cla.s.ses, and--what is more terrible--all the virtues of the middle cla.s.ses.

The majority of Socialists, if you observe, are young people of the well-to-do middle cla.s.ses. They embrace the blue-serge G.o.d, not from any conviction, not from any sense of comrades.h.i.+p with their overworked and underpaid fellows, but because Socialism gives them an excuse for escape from their petty home life and pettier etiquettes. As Socialists they can 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 that curious figure whom they name The Pater. They have merely to explain that 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 they have found it so convenient and so inexpensive that they have adopted Socialism in their thousands. But observe them in the company of the h.o.r.n.y-handed, the roughshod, and the ill-spoken; they are either ill at ease or frankly patronizing. They are Bohemians among aristocrats and aristocrats among Bohemians.

Johnnie is just beginning to be noted at their meetings as a debater of some importance. In fact, after the lecture, he will rise and deliver questions so shrewd and penetrating that the young folk of Sidcup and Blackheath and Hampstead have found it a saving to their personal dignity to give him a seat on the platform, where, of course, he is not only rendered harmless to them but is an encouragement to other sons of the soil in the audience.

It is in the region of the Island that most of the battles take place between organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there be any industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees--gaily they trip along and take charge of the hapless workers, until the poor fellows 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, and the Union leaders return to Blackheath and Sidcup and Bedford Park, crying that it is useless to attempt to help the poor; they won't be helped: they are hopeless dipsomaniacs.

Here were organized those Unemployed marches which made our streets so cheery a few years ago. I once joined Johnnie on a tramp with one of these regiments, and it was the most spiritless march I have ever been in. The men didn't want to march. It was the Social Service darlings who wanted to form them into a pretty procession, and lead them all round London as actual proof of the Good that was being done among the Right People. We started at nine o'clock on a typically London morning. The day was neither cold nor warm, neither light nor dark. The sky was an even stretch of watery grey, and the faces that pa.s.sed us were not kindly. Mostly they suggested impaired digestions or guilty consciences.

We had a guard of honour of about ten hefty constables, and for us, as for the great ones of the town, the traffic was held up that we might pa.s.s. Among the crowd our appointed pet.i.tioners, with labelled collecting-boxes, worked with subdued zeal, and above the rumble of the 'buses and the honk-honk of motors and the frivolous tinkle of hansoms rose their harsh, insistent rattle. Now and again a gust of wind would send a dozen separate swirls of dust into our eyes. People stared at us much as one stares at an Edgware Road penny-museum show. We were not men. We were a procession of the Unemployed: An Event. We were a jolly lot. Most of us stared at the ground or the next man's back; only a few gazed defiantly around. None talked. Possibly a few were thinking, and if any of them were imaginative, that slow shuffle might have suggested a funeral march of hopes and fears. There was a stillness about it that was unpleasant; a certain sickness in the air. I think the crowd must have wondered what we were going to do next. You may punch an Englishman's nose, and heal the affront with apologies and a drink. You may call him a liar, and smooth over the incident by the same means. You may take bread out of his mouth, and still he may be pacified. But when you touch his home and the bread of the missus and the kids, you are touching something sacred and thereby inviting disaster; and I think the crowd was antic.i.p.ating some concerted a.s.sault. As a matter of fact, we were the tamest lot of protesters you ever saw. I don't think any of us realized that he had anything sacred.

As we reached Piccadilly Circus the watery grey suddenly split, and through the ragged hole the sun began to peer: a pale sun that might have been out all night. It streamed weakly upon us, showing up our dismal clothes, glancing off the polished rails of the motor-'buses and the sleek surfaces of the hansoms. But it gave us no heart. Our escorts deigned us an occasional glance, but they had a soft job; we were not gnas.h.i.+ng our teeth or singing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" or "The Red Flag."

People stared ... and stared. The long black snake of our procession threaded disconsolately into Knightsbridge. Hardly a word or a sign of interest escaped us. On the whole four hours' march there was but one laugh. That came from a fellow on the near side, who thought he'd found a cigar by the kerb, and fell and hurt his knee in the effort to secure his treasure--a discoloured chip of wood. Curiously enough, we didn't laugh. It was he who saw the fine comedy of the incident.

We debouched into Church Street, so to Notting Hill, and up the wretched Bayswater Road to Oxford Street. The sun was then--at one o'clock--s.h.i.+ning with a rich splendour. The roadway blazed. Under the shop-blinds, which drooped forward like heavy lids over the tired eyes of the windows, little crowds from Streatham and Kentish Town were shopping. They stared at us. Through the frippery of this market-place we reached the homelier atmosphere of Holborn. The rattle of our boxes'

had grown apace, and we made small bets among ourselves as to what the total takings would be. I was thankful when the march or solemn walk was ended. For days afterwards my ears rang with the incessant clat-clat-clatter of those boxes, and for days afterwards I was haunted by those faces that stared at us, and then turned to stare at us, and then called other faces to stare at us. n.o.body in the whole march troubled us. n.o.body cursed us; n.o.body had a kind word for us. They just gave us their pennies, because we had been "got up" for that procession by those dear, hard-working friends of theirs. On our return, and after the very thin _croute-au-pot_ that was served out to us, we were addressed 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's guest.

Whether Johnnie really knows or cares anything about economics I cannot say. I only know that I don't like him in that part. I like him best sitting round his open kitchen-range, piled with c.o.ke, or sitting in the four-ale bar of "The Griffin." For what he does know a tremendous lot about is human nature; only he does not know that he knows it. His knowledge drops out of him, casually, in side remarks. At his post on the docks he observes not only white human nature but black and yellow and brown, and he knows how to deal with it all. He can calm a squabble among Asiatics of varying colour and creed, when everybody else is helpless; not by strength of arm or position or character, but simply because he appreciates the subtle differences of human natures, and because he understands the needs and troubles of the occasion.

"Yes," he has said to me sometimes, on my asking whether he didn't find his night-watch rather lonely--"yes, I suppose some chaps would find it lonely. 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 a docks ain't the same thing as night-watchman at the road-up.

Notterbitterfit. Thieves, my boy. Wouldn't think they'd venture into a place the size of ours, perhaps? Don't they, though? And, my word, if I catch 'em at it! Not big burglars, of course, but the small pilfering lot. Get in during the day they do, and hide behind bales and in odd corners. Then they come out when it's dark and nose around, and their little fingers, in spite of their Catechism, start right away at picking and stealing.... Funny lot, these jolly Lascars. If I was manager of a music-hall and I wanted a real good star turn--something fresh--I'd stand at my gate and bag the crew of a Dai Nippon, just as they come off, and then bung 'em on just as they are, and let 'em sing and dance just 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 fleshes creep. Of course it looks fiercer'n it really is. All that there chanting and chucking knives about is only, as you might say, ceremonial. But if they happen to come off at two o'clock of a foggy winter morning--my word, it don't do to be caught bending then! But lucky for me I know most of 'em. And they know me. And even if they're away for three months on end, next time they're back at West India they bring 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 thick night with the boys and have to join their boats. Sometimes one of 'em tumbles into the dock half an hour before she sails, with a smashed lip and that kind of air about him that tells you he can see a dock jam full of s.h.i.+pping and is trying to sort 'em out and find his little show. Of course, as a watchman and a man, I kind of sympathize. We've all done it one time or another. I remember one night ..."

And when Johnnie remembers, that is the time to drink up and have another, for once he starts yarning he is not easily stopped. Wonderful anecdotes he has to relate, too; not perhaps brilliant stories, or even stories 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 the spell of Johnnie's rememberings.

You may catch him any night of the week, and find him ready to yarn, save on Sat.u.r.days. Sat.u.r.day night is always dedicated to the missus and to shopping in Poplar or Blackwall. Shopping on Sat.u.r.day nights in these districts is no mere domestic function: it is a festival, an event.

Johnnie washes and puts on his second-best suit, and then he and the missus depart from the Island, he bearing a large straw marketing bag, she carrying a string-bag and one of those natty stout-paper bags given away by greengrocers and milliners. As soon as the 'bus has tossed them into Salmon Lane, off Commercial Road, they begin to revel.

Salmon Lane on a Sat.u.r.day night is very much like any other shopping centre in the more humane quarters of London. Shops and stalls blaze and roar with endeavour. The shops, by reason of their more respectable standing, affect to despise stalls, but when it comes to compet.i.tion it is usually stalls first and shops hanging round the gate. The place reeks 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 work joyfully with a chopper and a lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper is never abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, and many of them have to await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up his wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfully fingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers'

shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherless brothers and sisters with the few s.h.i.+llings which Dad has doled out. Who knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending value of twopence-halfpenny? Observe her as she lays in her Sunday gorge. Two penn'orth of "pieces" from the butcher's to begin with (for twopence you get a bagful of oddments of meat, tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs from various joints, good nouris.h.i.+ng bones, bits of suet, and, if the a.s.sistant thinks you have nice eyes, he will throw in some skirt). Then to the large greengrocer's shop for a penn'orth of "specks" (spotted or otherwise damaged fruit, and vegetables of every kind). Of this three penn'orth the most valuable item 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 two days. Then, at the baker's, you get a market basket full of stale bread for twopence, and, seeing it's for Sunday, you spend another penny and get five stale cakes. At the grocer's, two ounces of tea, two ounces of margarine, and a penn'orth of sc.r.a.ps from the bacon counter for Dad's breakfast. And there you have a refection for the G.o.ds.

Observe also the pale young man who lodges in some remote garret by Limehouse Hole. He has but a room, and his landlady declines the responsibility of "doing" for him. He must, therefore, do his own shopping, and he does it about as badly as it can be done. His demeanour suggests a babe among wolves, innocence menaced by the wiles of Babylon; and sometimes motherly old dears audibly express pity at his helplessness, which fl.u.s.ters him still more, so that he leaves his change on the counter.

The road is a black gorge, rent with dancing flame. The public-house lamps flare with a jovial welcome for the jaded shopper, and every moment its doors flap open, and fling their fire of joy on the already overcharged air. Between the stalls parade the youth and beauty, making appointments for the second house at the Poplar Hippodrome, or a.s.signations for Sunday evening.

As the stalls clear out the stock so grows the vociferousness of their proprietors, and soon the ear becomes deadened by the striving rush of sound. Every stall and shop has its wide-mouthed laureate, singing its present glories and adding l.u.s.tre 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't keep looking at 'em, though. Buy 'em. Buy 'em. Sooner you buy 'em sooner I can get 'ome and 'ave my little bath. Come along, ladies; it's a dirty night, but thank G.o.d 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 your nacheral, you ever see anything like his melons. Then a yard or so behind you an organ and cornet take up their stand and add "Tipperary"

to the swelling symphony. But human ears can receive so much, and only so much, sound; and clapping your hands over your ears, you seek the chaste seclusion, for a few minutes, of the saloon of "The Black Boy,"

or one of the many fried-fish bars of the Lane.