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 passed 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
pass. Among the crowd our appointed petitioners, 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 anticipating some concerted assault. 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
gnashing our teeth or singing the "Marseillaise" 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--shining 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. Nobody in the whole march
troubled us. Nobody cursed us; nobody 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 coke, 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 shipping 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 Saturdays. Saturday night is always dedicated to the missus and
to shopping in Poplar or Blackwall. Shopping on Saturday 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 Saturday 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 competition 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 shillings 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, trimmings from various joints, good
nourishing bones, bits of suet, and, if the assistant 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 scraps from the bacon counter for Dad's
breakfast. And there you have a refection for the gods.
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 flusters 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
assignations 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 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'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 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 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.
Still later in the evening the noise increases, for then the stalls are
anxious to clear out their stock at any old price. The wise wife--and
Johnnie's missus is one--waits until this hour before making her large
purchases. For now excellent joints and rabbits and other trifles are
put up for auction. The laureates are wonderful fellows, many of them, I
imagine, decayed music-hall men. A good man in this line makes a very
decent thing out of it. The usual remuneration is about eight or ten
shillings for the night and whatever beer they want. And if you are
shouting for nearly six hours in the heavy-laden air of Salmon Lane, you
want plenty of beer and you earn all you get. They have a spontaneous
wit about them that only the Cockney possesses. Try to take a rise out
of one of them, and you will be sadly plucked. Theirs is Falstaffian
humour--large and clustering: no fine strokes, but huge, rich-coloured
sweeps. It is useless to attempt subtleties in the roar of a Saturday
night. 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, if
the 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 the
outside counter, where he can easily reach the rows of joints. Around
him gathers the crowd of housewives, ready for the auction. He takes the
first--a hefty leg of mutton.
"Nah then!" he cries challengingly, "nah then! Just stop shooting yer
marth 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 rival
establishment across the Lane, where another laureate is addressing
another crowd. "Meat, mother, meat. If yer don't want Meat, then it
ain't no use comin' 'ere. If yer wants a cut orf an animal what come
from Orstralia or Noo Zealand, then it ain't no use comin' 'ere. Over
the road's where they got them. They got joints over there what come
from the Anty-Podeys, and they ain't paid their boat-passage yet. No, my
gels, this what I got 'ere is Meat. None of your carvings orf a cow what
looks like a fiddlecase on trestles. You--sir--just cast yer eye over
that. Carry that 'ome to the missus, and she'll let yer stay out till a
quarter to ten, and yeh'll never find a button orf yer weskit long as
yeh live. That's the sort o' meat to turn the kiddies into sojers and
sailors. Nah then--what say to six-and-a-arf?"
He fondles the joint much as one would a babe in long clothes, dandling
it, patting it, stroking it, exhibiting it, while the price comes
steadily down from six-and-a-half to six, five, four-and-a-half, and
finally is knocked down at four. Often a prime-looking joint will go as
low as twopence a pound, and the smaller stuff is practically given away
when half-past twelve is striking.
It is the same with the other shops--greengrocery, fish, and fruit. All
is, so far as possible, cleared out before closing time, and only enough
is held in reserve to supply that large army of Sunday morning shoppers
who are unable to shop on Saturday night owing to Bill's festivities.
* * * * *
That is one worker's night. But there are others. There are those
workers whose nights are not domestic, and who live in the common
lodging-houses and shelters which are to be found in every district in
London. There are two off Mayfair. There are any number round Belgravia.
Seven Dials, of course, is full of them, for there lodge the Covent
Garden porters and other early birds. In these houses you will find
members of all-night trades that you have probably never thought of
before. I met in a Blackwall Salvation Army Shelter a man who looks out
from a high tower, somewhere down the Thames, all night. He starts at
ten o'clock at night, and comes off at six, when he goes home to his
lodging-house to bed. I have never yet been able to glean from him
whose tower it is he looks out from, or what he looks out for. Then
there are those exciting people, the scavengers, who clean our streets
while we sleep, with hose-pipe and cart-brush; the printers, who run off
our newspapers; the sewer-men, who do dirty work underground;
railwaymen, night-porters, and gentlemen whose occupation is not
mentioned among the discreet.
The Salvation Army Shelters are very popular among the lodging-house
patrons, for you get good value there for very little money, and, by
paying weekly, instead of nightly, you get reductions and a
better-appointed dormitory. I know many street hawkers who have lived
for years at one Shelter, and would not think of using a common
lodging-house. The most popular quarter for this latter class of house
is Duval Street, Spitalfields. At one time the reputation of this street
was most noisome; indeed, it was officially known as the worst street in
London. It holds a record for suicides, and, I imagine, for murders. It
was associated in some way with that elusive personality, Jack the
Ripper; 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 the
Act, and, though it is by no means so gay and devilish as it is supposed
to have been of old, they do say that the police still descend first on
Duval Street in cases of local murder where the culprit has, as the
newspapers say, made good his escape. I do not recommend it as a
pleasure-jaunt for ladies or for the funny and fastidious folk of
Bayswater. They would suffer terribly, I fear. The talk of the people
would lash them like whips; the laughter would sear like hot irons. The
noises bursting through the gratings from the underground cellars would
be like a chastisement on the naked flesh, and shame and smarting and
fear 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; it
would purify their spotty little minds with pity and terror. For I think
Duval Street stands easily first as one of the affrighting streets of
London. There is not the least danger or disorder; but the tradition has
given it an atmosphere of these things. Here are gathered all the most
unhappy wrecks of London--victims and apostles of vice and crime. The
tramps doss here: men who have walked from the marches of Wales or from
the Tweed border, begging their food by the way. Their clothes hang from
them. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet.
Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides to
Good Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe in
a manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known as
the Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on night
duty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a local
doctor passed him. "Say," said the doctor, with a chuckle, "you're
standing rather close, aren't you? Want to take something away with
you?" "Not exactly that, sir; but it's lonely round here for the night
stretch, and, somehow, it's kind of company if I can feel the little
beggars dropping on my helmet."
In this street you are on the very edge of the civilized world. All are
outcasts, even among their own kind. All are ready to die, and too sick
even 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 ugly
misery of all the ages is collected here in essence, and from it the
atmosphere is charged; an atmosphere more horrible than any that I know:
worse than that of Chinatown, worse than that of Shadwell. These are
merely insidious and menacing, but Duval Street is painful.
It was here that I had the nearest approach to an adventure that I have
ever had in London. I was sitting in the common kitchen of one of the
houses 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 law
which nobody regards and which nobody executes. Women were there in
plenty--mostly old, unkempt women, wearing but a bodice and skirt and
boots. The kitchen was a bare, blue-washed apartment, the floor sanded,
with a long wooden table and two or three wooden forms. A generous fire
roared up a wide chimney. The air was thick with fumes of pipes that had
been replenished with "old soldiers" from West End gutters. Suddenly a
girl came in with an old man. I looked at her with some interest because
she was young, with copper-coloured hair that strayed about her face
with all the profusion of an autumn sunset. She was the only youthful
thing in the place, bar myself. I looked at her with rather excited
interest because she was very drunk. She called the old man Dad. A few
of the men greeted him. One or two nodded to the girl. "'Lo, Luba. Bin
on the randy?" The women looked at her, not curiously, or with
compassion or disgust, but cursorily. I fancied, from certain incipient
movements, 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 scrofulous
tramp, and kneed him a little aside from the fire. The tramp slipped
from the edge of the form, but made no rebuke. Dad sat down and left
Luba to herself. She swayed perilously for a moment, and then flopped
weakly 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 head
rolled.
"I 'eard abaht it," he went on. "Hunky Bottles see a _Star_ wi' your
pickcher 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 she
flared up and snapped: "Oh, shut up, for Christ's sake, cancher? Give
any one the fair pip, you do. Ain't I answered enough damsilly questions
from 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 a
match held about three inches from it. Finally, I lit it for her, and
she seemed to see me for the first time. She looked at me, at once
shiftily 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."