human nature came out with the weals and bruises. He didn't want to do
the 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 pointed
out they would offer lavish apologies and pots of four-'arf, but the
flesh is only the flesh.
"Turn the blanker over!"
In that moment, as he was lifted round, his left hand was freed. In a
flash it fumbled at his breast. Twisting his head aside, he got
something between his teeth, and through the fetid fog went the shiver
and whine of the Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he blew, with the
correct inflection.
At the first call he was dropped like a hot coal. From other worlds
came an answering call. He blew again. Then, like thin jets of water,
whistles spurted from every direction. He heard the sound of scuttering
feet as his enemies withdrew. He heard the sound of scuttering feet as
they closed in again. But he was not waiting for trouble. He pulled his
burning self together, and ran for the lights that stammered through the
gloom at the Britannia. He whistled as he ran. Curses followed him.
At the Britannia he collided with a slow constable. He flung a story at
him. The constable inspected him, and took notes. The lurking passages
began to brighten with life, and where, a moment ago, was sick torpidity
was now movement, clamour. Distant whistles still cried. The place
tingled with nervous life.
Some cried "Whassup?" and some cried "Stanback, cancher!" They stared,
bobbed, inquired, conjectured. The women were voluble. The men spat. A
forest of faces grew up about Simple Simon. A hurricane of hands broke
about his head. The constable took notes and whistled. A humorist
appeared.
"'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! Other
people wanter have a see, don't they?"
"Stanback--stanback! Why cancher stanback!"
Fatty inquired if Someone wanted a smash over the snitch. Because, if
so....
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 crowd
swooped in on itself with a sudden undeniable movement. Its centre
flattened, wavered, broke, and the impelling force was brought face to
face with Simple Simon and the constable. It was Flanagan and the boys.
Three pairs of arms collared the constable low. Simple Simon felt a jerk
on his arm that nearly pulled it from its socket, and a crackling like
sandpaper at his ear. "Bolt for it!"
And he would have done so, but at that moment the answering whistles
leaped to a sharper volume, and through the distorting fog came antic
shapes of blue, helmeted. The lights of the Britannia rose up. Panic
smote 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 trod
on 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 hat
on. A young girl was pinioned against the wall by a struggling mass for
whom there was no way. There was in the air an imminence of incident,
acid and barbed. The girl screamed. She implored. Then, with a frantic
movement, her free hand flew to her hat. She withdrew something horrid,
and brought it down, horridly, three times. Three shrieks flitted from
her 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' the
bashed '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, clanging
danger through the yellow maze of Hoxton streets. There was the jangle
of harness and bells; the clop-clop of hoofs, rising to a clatter. There
was the scamper of a thousand feet as the engine swung into the street
with the lordliest flourish and address. Close behind it a long, lean
red thing swayed to and fro, like some ancient dragon seeking its
supper.
"Whichway, whichway, whichway?" it roared.
"Ever bin had?" cried the humorist. "There ain't no pleading fire! This
is 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, and
torn 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 with
almost 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 a
moment, 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 trod
on my blanking 'and, I'll just about----!"
On the word "Weeny" Simple Simon was once again jerked by the arm, and
hustled 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. He
straightened his dress. He touched sore places with a tender solicitude.
His head was racking. All his limbs ached and burned. He desired nothing
but the cold sheets of his bed and a bottle of embrocation. He swore at
the fog, with a fine relish for the colour of sounds. He swore at things
that were in no way responsible for his misfortune. Somewhere, he
conjectured, in warmth and safety, Henry Wiggin, the copper's nark, was
perfectly enjoying his supper of fried fish and 'taters and stout.
And then, over the sad, yellow night, faint and sweet and far away, as
the 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 the
wharves with malice. The hour was late, but life ran high in those
parts. Against the savage purple of the night a few wisps of rigging and
some gruff funnels stood up in East and West India Docks.
Sheer above the walls of East India Dock rose the deck of the _Cawdor
Castle_, as splendidly correct as a cathedral. The leaping lines of her
seemed lost in the high skies, and she stood out sharply, almost
ecstatically. Against such superb forces of man, the forces of Nature
seemed dwarfed. It was a lyric in steel and iron. Men hurried from the
landing-stage, up the plank, vanishing into the sly glooms of the huge
port-holes. Chains rang and rattled. Lascars of every kind flashed here
and there: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in every
lingo was on the air. Some hurried from the dock, making for a
lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock,
with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but
rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a
far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous
voice 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 about
them, smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall streets came to them
in throbbing blasts, for it was Saturday night, and closing time. Over
the great plain of London went up a great cry. Outside the doors of
every hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford
Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of
their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of
complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu
concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows.
A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of
eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand
wives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, for a thousand jovial or
brutal mates; and a thousand beds received their occupants in full
harness, booted and hatted, as though the enemy were at the gates.
Everywhere strains of liquor-music surged up for the next thirty
minutes, finally to die away piecemeal as different roads received
different revellers.
In the hot, bilious dark of Blackwall, the tug swayed and jerked, and
the voices of the men seemed almost to shatter the night. But high above
them was the dirty main street, and there "The Galloping Horses" flared
and fluttered and roared. There seemed to be trouble.... One heard a
querulous voice: "I said TIME, din' I?" And another: "Well, let 'im
prove it. Let 'im 'it me, that's all!" From the tug you could see the
dust of the street rise in answering clouds to the assaults of many
feet. Then, quite suddenly, the wide swing-doors of the bar flapped
back. A golden gleam burst on the night and seemed to vomit a slithering
mass of men which writhed and rolled like an octopus. Then you heard the
collapsible gates run to their sockets with a glad clang, and the gas
was switched off.
The fester of noise widened and widened, and at last burst into twenty
minute 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 is
fan-tan. And blasted miracles is blasted miracles."
I stood on the tug, with some of the boys, and in silence we watched the
drama that was about to unfold itself. I had tramped there,
unthinkingly, up the thunderous length of Rotherhithe Tunnel and down
East India Dock Road and had fallen in with Chuck Lightfoot and some of
his waterside cronies. We were lounging on the tug, so far as I
remember, because we were lounging on the tug. For no other reason.
After the outcry of the Great Voice, there was a short silence. It was
broken 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-wordily
late ought to be bad-wordily bad-worded. The next moment Arfer had gone
down to a blow from the Great Voice.
Things began to happen. There was a loud scratch as a hundred feet
scuttered backward. The victim sprang up. For a moment astonishment
seemed to hold him, as he bleared; then he seemed about to burst with
wrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The lady screamed for aid. He
spat on his hands. He hitched his trousers. Hands down, chin protruded,
he advanced on his opponent with the slow, insidious movement of the
street fighter. The other man dashed in, beat him off with the left, and
followed 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. The
lady had lashed herself to a whirlwind of profanity. She spat words at
the crowd, and oaths fell like toads from her lips. We below heard the
crowd and the lady; but we saw only the principals of the combat until
... until the lady, disregarding the ethics of the game, flew in with
screwed face, caught the coming arm of the big man, and pinioned it
beneath her own.
"'Elp, 'elp, some of yeh!" she cried. Her husband fastened on to his
enemy, tore at his collar with wild fingers, opened his mouth, and tried
to bite. The big man struggled with both. The bulky form of the lady was
swung back and forth by his cunning arm; and one heard the crowd stand
by, press in, rush back, in rhythm to the movements of the battlers. A
moment later the lady was down and out. A sudden blow at the breast from
the 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 blinds
began to wink. One heard the creak of opening windows, and voices: "Why
doncher separate 'em? Why cancher shut that plurry row?" With the new
light one saw the crowd against a ground of chocolate hue. Here and
there a cigarette picked out a face, glowing like an evil eye. All else
was dank darkness.
Round and round the combatants went. Two well-set youngsters made a dash
upon 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 voice
wailed 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 me
hear-r-t!"
Then Chuck Lightfoot, known also as The Panther, The Croucher, and The
Prize Packet, shifted from my side. I looked at him. "Fed up on this, I
am. Wait here." He vaulted from the deck of the tug to the
landing-stage, strode up the gang-plank, and was lost in the long shaft
of darkness.
From above one heard a noise--a nasty noise: the sound of a man's head
being banged on the pavement. Frank's wife screamed: "Separate 'em! He's
killin' '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 a
definite cry. The word "dead--dead--dead" flitted from mouth to mouth.
Some turned away. Others approached as near as they dared, retreating
fearfully 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 things
besides. He was the straightest boy I have ever met in that line. He had
every high animal quality that a man should have. And he had a cold
nerve that made men twice his size afraid of him.
The fight was stopped. Two blows from Chuck had stopped it. The crowd
gathered round and gave first aid to both combatants, while Chuck faced
them, and waited for assaults. We climbed up and stood with him, but
nothing happened. Tragedy is so often imminent in this region, and so
often trickles away to rubbish. The crowd was vociferous and gestic. It
swooped 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' impression
of Chelsea. And, if you would perceive rightly the soul of Chelsea, you
must view it through the pearl-grey haze of just such a temperament as
that 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 short
street than you will find in the whole mass of Oxford Street and
Piccadilly. There is something curiously feminine and intoxicating in
the quality of its charm, something that evokes the silver-pensive mood.
One visions it as a graceful spinster--watered silks, ruffles, corkscrew
curls, you know, with lily fingers caressing the keys of her
harpsichord. Pass down Cheyne Walk at whatever time you will, and you
are never alone; little companies of delicate fancy join you at every
step. The gasworks may gloom at you from the far side. The L.C.C. cars
may hum and clang. But fancy sweeps them away. It is like sitting amid
the barbarities of a Hyde Park drawing-room, in the emerald dusk,
listening to the pathetic wheezing of a musical-box, ridiculously
sweet:--
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 her
silvern beauty when he first saw her reclining by the river, beautifying
that which beautifies her. All about Chelsea the colours seem to chime
with their backgrounds as though they loved them; and when the lamps are
lighted, flinging soft shadows on sixteenth and seventeenth-century
gables and doorways and passages, then she becomes a place of wonder, a
Bagdad, 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, whose
greatness owes nothing to time, place, or social circumstance: the names
of those whose greatness is of the soul, and who have shaken the world
with the beauty they have revealed to us. But Art has now taken
possession of her, and it is as the studio of the artist that Chelsea is
known to-day. Step this way, if you please. We draw the curtain. _Vie de
Boheme!_ But not, mark you, the _vie de Boheme_ of Murger. True,
Rodolphe and Marcel are here, and Mimi and Musette. But the studio is
not the squalid garret that we know. We have changed all that. Rodolphe
writes light verse for the "largest circulations." Mimi draws fashion
plates, and dresses like the Duchess of the novelettes. Marcel--well,
Marcel of Chelsea may be poor, but his is only a relative poverty. He is
poor in so far as he dines for two shillings instead of five. The Marcel
of to-day who is accustomed to skipping a meal by stress of
circumstances doesn't live in Chelsea. He simply couldn't do it; look at
the rents. He lives in Walworth Road or Kentish Town. No; there is a
_vie de Boheme_ at Chelsea, but it is a Bohemia of coffee liqueurs and
Turkish cigarettes.
The beginnings of the delectable suburb are obscure. It seems to have
assumed importance on the day when Henry VIII "acquired" its manor,
which led to the building of numerous sycophantic houses. The Duchess of
Monmouth had a residence here, with the delightful John Gay as
secretary. Can one imagine a modern Duchess with a modern poet as
secretary? The same house was later occupied by the gouty dyspeptic
Smollett, who wrote all his books at the top of his bad temper. Then
came--but one could fill an entire volume with nothing but a list of the
goodly fellowship of Chelsea.
The book about Chelsea has yet to be written. Such a book should
disclose to us the soul of the place, with its eternal youth and eternal
antiquity. It should introduce us to its charming ghosts--it is
difficult to name one disagreeable person in this pageant; even the
cantankerous Smollett was soothed when he came under its spell. It
should enable us to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer acquaintance,
with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten
laureate), 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 adorable
personalities whose names must come "among those present." It should
show us its famous places. It should afford us peep-holes into the
studios of famous artists--Augustus John's studio is a revelation in
careful disarrangement; it should take us round a "Show Sunday"; it
should reconstruct the naive gaieties of Cremorne; and, finally, it
should recreate and illumine all the large, forgotten moments in the
lives of those apostles of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the soul
of Chelsea has fused with more of herself than men may know; ending,
perhaps, with a disquisition on the effects of environment on the
labours of genius.
Such a book must be done by a stranger, an observer, one with a gracious
pen, a delicate, entirely human mind. There is one man above all who is
divinely 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 Chelsea
Palace, 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 of
thought. 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 good
artist. He said he hadn't much money, so what about it? We decided on a
Guinness to begin with, and then he ordered some Welsh Rarebits, while I
inspected the walls of the saloon, which are decorated with nothing but
originals, many of them bearing resounding names. In the billiard-room
he introduced me to Augustus John and three other famous men who might
not like it known that they drink beer in public-houses. When the Welsh
Rarebits were announced, we went upstairs to the cosy dining-room and
feasted gorgeously, watching, from the window, the many-coloured life of
Chelsea....
When every scrap of food on our plates was gone, we had another
Guinness, and I went back to his studio, a beautiful room with oak
panelling and electric light, which he rented from a travelling pal for
the ridiculous sum of three shillings a week. It stood next to the
reconstructed Crosby Hall, and looked out on a wide prospect of sloping
roofs, 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 famous
people with whom he had _bohemed_. Then, at about ten o'clock, he said
it 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?