was based on the original inception, and much improved. At these
organized meetings the children are forced to go through antics which,
three hundred years ago, were a perfectly natural expression of the joy
of life. These antics were called morris dances; they were mad, vulgar,
joyous abandonment to the mood of the moment; just as the dances
performed by little gutter-arabs and factory-girls around street organs
are an abandonment to the mood of to-day's moment. But the elderly
spinsters have found that what was vulgar three hundred years ago is
artistic to-day; or if it isn't they will make it so. Why on earth a
child should have to dance round a maypole just because children danced
round a maypole centuries ago, I cannot understand. To-day, the morris
dance is completely self-conscious, stiff, and ugly. The self-developed
dance of the little girl at the organ is a thing of beauty, because it
is a quite definite expression of something which the child feels; it
follows no convention, it changes measure at fancy, it regards nothing
but its own rapture.... The morris dance isn't.
So, at the hall to which I went, the children were allowed to play
exactly as and when they liked. Any child could come from anywhere, and
bring other children. There was a piano, and some one was always in
attendance to play whatever might be required by the children. If they
wanted "The Cubanola Glide," or "Down in Jungle-Town," or "In the
Shadows," they got it, or anything else they might choose. Toys of all
kinds were on hand--dolls, engines, railways, dolls'-houses, little
cooking-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, and
fell into a warmly lighted room, where the meetings of some local
Committee were usually held. All chairs had been cleared to the wall,
and the large central space was littered with troops of glad girls and
toddlers from the stark streets around. Instead of teaching the children
to play, the management here set the children to play by themselves and
set elder children to attend them. Great was the fun. Great was the
noise. 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 and
asked for it; but for the most part they were immersed in that subdued,
serious excitement which means that games are really being enjoyed. All
of the attendants were girls of 12 or 13, of that sweet age between
childhood and flapperhood, when girls are at their loveliest, with short
frocks that dance at every delicate step, and with unconcealed glories
of hair golden or dusky; all morning light and melody and fearlessness,
not yet realizing that they are women. Many of them, shabby and underfed
as they were, were really lovely girls, their beauty shining through
their rags with an almost religious radiance, as to move you to prayer
and tears. Their gentle ways with the baby-children were a joy to watch.
One group was working a model railway. In another a little
twelve-year-old girl was nursing two tinies, and had a cluster of others
at her feet while she read "Jack and the Beanstalk" from a luridly
illustrated rag-book. Another little girl was figuring certain steps of
a dance of her own invention, each step being gravely followed by two
youngsters who could scarcely walk.
Then the wonderful woman--a local woman, she bought a small shop years
ago, and now owns a blazing rank of Stores--who financed the play-room
went to the piano, crashed a few chords, and instantly every head,
golden or brown or dark, was lifted to us. My hostess said something--a
word of invitation--and, as though it were a signal, the crowd leaped
up, 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. If
my hearing were correct, they wanted every popular song of the last ten
years. 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 could
not have spoken them if they had, seemed to know the tune, and they let
it out in every possible key. That song went with a bang, and I had no
rest for at least half an hour. We managed to get them to write their
favourites on slips of paper, and I took them in rotation, the symphony
being in every case interrupted by long-drawn groans from the
disappointed ones, and shrieks of glee from those who had chosen it. "On
the Mississippi" was the winner of the evening; it was encored five
times; 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 of
Arc. Other girls followed her, each telling her own pet story. Their
skill in this direction was a thing to marvel at. The audience was a
joy, with half-raised heads, wide eyes, open mouths, every nerve of them
hanging on the reciter's words. Indeed, I, too, found that one of the
tale-tellers had "got" me with her story of Andersen's "Little Match
Girl."
On their asking another song, I told them the "creepy-creepy" story of
Mark Twain's--the one about "Who's got my Golden Arm," where, if you
have 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 together
for safety, I told it again, but instead of a shriek I got a hysterical
laugh which lasted for nearly a minute before they disentangled
themselves. Then I gave them Charles Pond's recital about the
dog-hospital, and the famous "Cohen at the Telephone."
At half-past nine they were collected into bunches, and dispatched home
under the guidance of the bigger girls. They paused at the door to
scream messages to me, to chant bits of the choruses we had sung, to
dance with loud, defiant feet on the hollow floor, and one little girl
gave me a pearl button from her pinafore as a keepsake, and hoped I
would come again. Then she kissed me Good-Night, and ran off amid jeers
from the boys.
At ten o'clock I helped my hostess in the clearing away of the cakes and
coffee-cups, and, half an hour later we were out in the clamorous wilds
of 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 Soho
Square, and you are back in the eighteenth century and as lonely as a
good man in Chicago. Cross the Square, cut through Greek Street or Dean
Street, and you are in--Paris, amid the clang, the gesture, and the
alert nonchalance of metropolitan France.
Soho--magic syllables! For when the respectable Londoner wants to feel
devilish he goes to Soho, where every street is a song. He walks through
Old Compton Street, and, instinctively, he swaggers; he is abroad; he is
a dog. He comes up from Surbiton or Norwood or Golder's Green, and he
dines cheaply at one of the hundred little restaurants, and returns home
with the air and the sensation of one who has travelled, and has peeped
into places that are not ... Quite ... you know.
Soho exists only to feed the drab suburban population of London on the
spree. That artificial atmosphere of Montmartre, those little touches of
a false Bohemia are all cunningly spread from the brains of the
restaurateurs as a net to catch the young bank clerk and the young
Fabian girl. Indeed, one establishment has overplayed the game to the
extent of renaming itself "The Bohemia." The result is that one dare not
go there for fear of dining amid the minor clergy and the Fabians and
the girl-typists. It is a little pitiable to make a tour of the cafes
and watch the Londoner trying to be Bohemian. There has been, of course,
for the last few years, a growing disregard, among all classes, for the
heavier conventionalities; but this determined Bohemianism is a mistake.
The Englishman can no more be trifling and light-hearted in the Gallic
manner than a Polar bear can dance the _maxixe bresilienne_ in the
jungle. If you have ever visited those melancholy places, the night
clubs and cabarets, which had a boom a year or two ago, you will
appreciate the immense effort that devilry demands from him. Those
places were the last word in dullness. I have been at Hampstead
tea-parties which gave you a little more of the joy of living. I have
watched the nuts and the girls, and what have I seen? Boredom. Heavy
eyes, nodding heads, a worn-out face, saying with determination, "I WILL
be gay!" Perhaps you have seen the pictures of those luxuriously
upholstered and appointed establishments: music, gaiety, sparkle, fine
dresses, costume songs, tangos, smart conversation and faces, and all
the rest of it. But the real thing.... Imagine a lot of dishevelled
girls pouring into a stuffy room after the theatre, looking already
fatigued, but bracing themselves to dance and eat and drink and talk
until--as I have seen them--they fall asleep over the tables, and hate
the boy who brought them there.
Practically the sole purpose of the place was to fill some one's
pockets, for, as the patrons were playing at being frightful dogs, the
management knew that they could do as they liked with the tariff. The
boys wouldn't go to night-clubs if they were not spendthrifts. Result:
whisky-and-soda, seven-and-sixpence; cup of coffee, half a crown. And
nobody 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 them
so much, I do wish to goodness they wouldn't be Bohemian; I do wish to
goodness they would keep out of Soho cafes. They only come in quest of a
Bohemianism which isn't there. They can get much better food at home, or
they can afford to get a really good meal at an English hotel. I wish
they would leave Soho alone for the people like myself who feed there
because it is cheap, and because the waiters will give us credit.
"Garcong," cried the diner whose food was underdone, "these sausages ne
sont pas fait!"
If the Cockney goes on like this, he will spoil Soho, and he will lose
his own delightful individuality and idiosyncrasy.
But, apart from the invasion of Soho by the girl-clerk and the
book-keeper, one cannot but love it. I love it because, in my early days
of scant feeding, it was the one spot in London where I could gorge to
repletion for a shilling. There was a little place in Wardour Street,
the Franco-Suisse--it is still there--whose shilling table d'hote was a
marvel: And I always had my bob's worth, I can assure you; for those
were the days when one went hungry all day in order to buy concert
tickets. Indeed, there were occasions when the breadbasket was removed
from 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 still
exists a Servian cafe where all manner of inflammatory organs of
Nihilism may be read, and where heavy-bearded men--Anarchists, you hope,
but piano-builders, you fear--would sit for three hours over their
dinner Talking, _Talking_, TALKING. Then for another hour they would
play backgammon, and at last roll out, blasphemously, to the darkened
street, and so Home to those mysterious lodgings about Broad Street and
Pulteney Street.
How the kitchens manage to do those shilling table d'hotes is a mystery
which I have never solved, though I have visited "below" on one or two
occasions and talked with the chefs. There are about a dozen cafes now
which, for the Homeric shilling, give you four courses, bread _ad lib_,
and coffee to follow. And it is good; it is a refection for the
gods--certain selected gods.
You stroll into the little gaslit room (enamelled in white and
decorated with tables set in the simplest fashion, yet clean and
sufficient) as though you are dropping in at the Savoy or Dieudonne's.
It is rhomboidal in shape, with many angles, as though perspective had
suddenly gone mad. Each table is set with a spoon, a knife, a fork, a
serviette, a basket of French bread, and a jar of French mustard. If you
are in spendthrift mood, you may send the boy for a bottle of _vin
ordinaire_, which costs tenpence; on more sober occasions you send him
for beer.
There is no menu on the table; the waiter or, more usually, in these
smaller places, the waitress explains things to you as you go along.
Each course carries two dishes, _au choix_. There are no _hors
d'oeuvres_; you dash gaily into the soup. The tureen is brought to the
table, and you have as many goes as you please. Hot water, flavoured
with potato and garnished with a yard of bread, makes an excellent
lining for a hollow stomach. This is followed by omelette or fish. Of
the two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omelette
is thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls
Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbid
hen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, and
mustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much
for the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhaps
Vienna steak, or _vol-au-vent_. The next item is Camembert or fruit, and
coffee concludes the display.
Dining in these places is not a matter of subdued murmurs, of
conversation in dulcet tones, or soft strains from the band. Rather you
seem to dine in a menagerie. It is a bombardment more than a meal. The
air buckles and cracks with noise. The first outbreak of hostilities
comes from the counter at the entry of the first guest. The moment he is
seated the waitress screams, "Un potage--un!" The large Monsieur, the
proprietor, at the counter, bellows down the tube, "Un POTAGE--Un!"
Away in subterranean regions an ear catches it, and a distant voice
chants "_Potage_!" And then from the far reaches of the kitchen you hear
a smothered tenor, as coming from the throat of one drowned in the
soup-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 their
conversation. 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 counter
in 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-past
seven it is no longer a restaurant; it is no longer a dinner that is
being served. It is a grand opera that is in progress. The vocalists,
"finding" themselves towards the end of the first act, warm up to the
second, and each develops an individuality. I have often let my Vienna
steak get cold while listening and trying to distinguish between the
kitchen lift-man and the cook. Lift-man is usually a light and agreeable
baritone, while the cook has mostly a falsetto, with a really exciting
register. This grand opera idea affects, in turn, the waitresses. To the
first-comers they are casual and chatty; but towards seven o'clock there
is a subtle change. They become tragic. They are as the children of
destiny. There is that Italianate sob in the voice as they demand
_Poulet roti au salade_! as who should cry, "Ah, fors e lui!" or "In
questa tomba...." They do not serve you. They assault you with soup or
omelette. They make a grand pass above your head, and fling knife and
fork before you. They collide with themselves and each other, and there
are recriminations and reprisals. They quarrel, apparently, to the
death, while M'sieu and Madame look on, passive spectators of the
eternal drama. The air boils. The blood of the diners begins to boil,
too, for they wave napkins and sticks of bread, and they bellow and
scream defiance at one another. They draw the attention of the waitress
to the fact that there is no salt on the table; what they seem to be
telling her is that the destinies of France are in the balance, the
enemy is at the gates, and that she must deliver herself as hostage or
suffer dreadful deaths. Everything, in fact, boils, except the soup and
the coffee; and at last, glad to escape, you toss your shilling on the
table and tumble out, followed by a yearning cry of "Une salade--une!"
Even then your entertainment has not ceased with the passing of the
shilling. For there are now numerous coffee-bars in Old Compton Street
where for a penny you may lounge at the counter and get an excellent cup
of black coffee, and listen to the electric piano, splurging its cheap
gaiety on the night, or to the newsmen yelling "_Journaux de Paris_!" or
"_Derniere Heure_!" There are "The Chat Noir," "The Cafe Leon," and "The
Cafe Bar Conte"; also there is "The Suisse," where you may get "rekerky"
liqueurs at threepence a time, and there is a Japanese cafe in Edward
Street.
Of course there are numbers of places in Soho where you may dine more
lavishly and expensively, and where you will find a band and a careful
wine-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 does
an excellent half-crown dinner, and so, too, does The Rendezvous. The
others range from three shillings to five shillings; and as the price of
the meal increases so do the prices on the wine-lists increase, though
you drink the same wine in each establishment.
The atmosphere of the cheaper places is, however, distinctly more
companionable than that of these others. In the latter you have Surbiton
and Streatham, anxious to display its small stock of evening frocks and
dress suits; very proper, very conscious of itself, very proud of having
broken away from parental tradition. But in the smaller places, which
are supported by a regular clientele of the French clerks, workmen, and
warehouse porters who are employed in and about Oxford Street, the sense
of camaraderie and naturalness is very strong. These people are not
doing anything extraordinary. They are just having dinner, and they are
gay and _insouciant_ about it, as they are about everything except
frivolity. It is not exciting for them to dine on five courses instead
of on roast mutton and vegetables and milk-pudding. It is a
common-place. For that is the curious thing about the foreigner:
wherever he wanders he takes his country with him. Englishmen get into
queer corners of the world, and adapt themselves to local customs, fit
themselves into local landscapes. Not so the Continental. Let him go to
London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and he will take France, or
Germany, or Italy, or Russia with him. Here in this little square mile
of London is France: French shops, French comestibles, French papers,
French books, French pictures, French hardware, and French restaurants
and manners. In old Compton Street he is as much in France as if he were
in the rue Chaussee d'Antin. I met some time since a grey little
Frenchman who is first fiddle at a hall near Piccadilly Circus. He has
never been out of France. Years and years ago he came from Paris, and
went to friends in Wardour Street. There he worked for some time in a
French music warehouse; and, when that failed, he was taken on in a
small theatre near Shaftesbury Avenue. Thence, at fifty-two, he drifted
into this music-hall orchestra, of which he is now leader. Yet during
the whole time he has been with us he has never visited London. His
London life has been limited to that square mile of short, brisk
streets, Soho. If he crossed Piccadilly Circus, he would be lost, poor
dear!
"Ah!" he sighs. "France ... yes ... Paris. Yes." For he lives only in
dreams of the real Paris. He hopes soon to return there. He hoped soon
to return there thirty years ago. He hates his work. He does not want
to play the music of London, but the music of Paris. If he must play in
London, he would choose to play in Covent Garden orchestra, where his
fancy would have full freedom. When he says Music, he means Massenet,
Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo. He plays Wagner with but little
interest. He plays Viennese opera with a positive snort. Ragtime--well,
I do not think he is conscious of playing it; he fiddles mechanically
for that. But when, by a rare chance, the bill contains an excerpt from
Pagliacci, La Boheme, or Butterfly, then he lives. He cares nothing for
the 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 festal
colour.
He seldom rises before noon--unless rehearsals compel--and then, after a
coffee, he wanders forth, smoking the cigarette of Algeria, and humming,
always humming, the music that is being hummed in Paris. He is
picturesque, in his own way--shabby, but artistically shabby. At one
o'clock you will see him in "The Dieppe," taking their shilling table
d'hote _dejeuner_, with a half-bottle of _vin ordinaire_; and he will
sit 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 this
in common: they are both exiles. They are both "saving up" to return
home. They have both been "saving up" for the last twenty years. In each
case there is a girl.... Or there was a girl twenty years ago. She is
waiting for them--one in Paris, and the other in Wicklow. At least, so
they believe. Sometimes, though, I think they must doubt; for I have met
them together in the Hotel Suisse putting absinthes away carelessly,
hopelessly; and a man does not play with absinthe when a girl is waiting
for 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 public
mind with Little Italy. Why, I do not know. It isn't and never was
Italian. 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 a
segment of the City, E.C.--a straggling street of flat-faced warehouses
and printing-works; high, impassive walls; gaunt, sombre, and dumb; not
one sound or spark of life to be heard or seen anywhere. Yet that is
what the unknowing think of when they think of the Italian quarter.
The true, warm heart of Italy in London is Eyre Street Hill, which slips
shyly out of one of the romantic streets of London--Clerkenwell Road.
There is something very taking about Clerkenwell Road, something snug
and cheering. It is full, clustering, and alive. Here is the Italian
Church. Here is St. John's Gate, where Goldsmith and Isaac Walton and a
host of other delightful fellows lived. This gatehouse is now all that
remains of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem around which the little
village of Clerkenwell developed. Very near, too, are Cloth Fair,
Bartholomew's Close, Smithfield, and a hundred other echoes of past
times. And here--most exciting of all--the redoubtable Mr. Heinz (famous
for his 57 Varieties) has his warehouse.