listen to blatant bands in our very urban parks, which have been
thoughtfully and artistically "arranged" by stout gentlemen on the
London County Council, whose motto seems to be: "Let's have something we
_all_ know!" or you may go for a 'bus-ride to Richmond, Hampton Court,
St. Albans, or Uxbridge, or Epping Forest. If you want to know, merely
for information, to what depths London can sink in the way of amusing
itself on Sundays, then I recommend the bands in the parks. Otherwise
there is something to be said for the 'bus-ride. You cannot enjoy
yourself in London on the Lord's Day, but you can take London with you
into some lonely spot and there re-create it. Jump on the Chingford 'bus
any Sunday evening, and let yourself go with the crowd. Out in the
glades of the Forest things are happening. The dappled shades of the
wood flash with colour and noise, and, if you are human, you will soon
have succumbed to the contagion of the carnival. Voices of all
varieties, shrill, hoarse, and rich, rise in the heavy August air,
outside "The Jolly Wagoners," and the jingle of glasses and the popping
of corks compete with the professional hilarity of the vendors of
novelties. Here and there bunches of confetti shoot up, whirling and
glimmering; elsewhere a group of girls execute the cake-walk or the
can-can, their van sustaining fusillade after fusillade of the forbidden
squirters, their rear echoing to "chi-ikes," catcalls, and other
appreciations, until an approaching motor-'bus scatters them in
squealing confusion. By the bridge, the blithe, well-bitten
Bacchanalians offer to fight one another, and then decide to kiss. The
babble of talk and laughter becomes a fury; the radiant maidens and the
bold boys become the eternal tragedy. Sometimes there is a dance, and
the empurpled girls are "taken round" by their masterful squires, the
steps of the dance involving much swirling of green, violet, pink, and
azure petticoats.
But afar in the Forest there is Sabbath peace, the sound of far bells,
the cry of the thrush, the holy pattering of leaves. The beeches,
meeting aloft and entwining, fling the light and the spirit of the
cathedral to the mossy floors. Here is purity and humanity. The air
beats freshly on the face. Away in the soft blue distance is a shadowy
suggestion of rolling country, the near fields shimmering under the
sweet, hot sky of twilight, and the distant uplands telling of calm and
deep peace in other places. Truly a court of love, and truly loved by
those who, for an hour or so, dwell in it. Tread lightly, you that pass.
It may move you to mirth, but there is nothing mirthful here; only the
eternal sorrow and the eternal joy. Perchance you do not make love in
this way; but love is love.... Under every brooding oak recline the rapt
couples, snatching their moments in this velvety green. Drowsy fragrance
is everywhere. The quiet breeze disorders stray ringlets, and sometimes
light laughter is carried sleepily to sleepy ears. Love, says an old
Malayan chanty which I learned at West India Dock--Love is kind to the
least of men. God will it so!
But if it be winter, then the Londoner is badly hit on Sundays. The
cafes and bars are miserable, deserted by their habitues and full only
of stragglers from the lost parts, who have wandered here unknowingly.
The waiters are off their form. They know their Sunday evening clientele
and they despise it; it is not the real thing. The band is off its form.
The kitchen is off its form. It is Sunday.
There are no shows of any kind, unless it be some "private performance"
of the Stage Society, for which tickets have to be purchased in the
week. Certainly there are, in some of the West End and most of the
suburban halls, the concerts of the National Sunday League, but the
orchestras and the singers are really not of a kind to attract the
musical temperament. The orchestras play those hackneyed bits of Wagner
and Tchaikowsky and Rossini of which all the world must be everlastingly
sick, and the singers sing those tiresome songs which so satisfy the
musical taste of Bayswater--baritone songs about the Army and the Navy
and their rollicking ways, and about old English country life; tenor
songs about Grey Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and Coming Back;
soprano songs about Calling and Wondering and Last Night's Dance and
Remembering and Forgetting--foolish words, foolish melodies, and clumsy
orchestration. But they seem to please the well-dressed crowd that
comes to listen to them, so I suppose it is justified. I suppose it
really interprets their attitude toward human passion. I don't know....
Anyway, it is sorry stuff.
If you don't go to these shows, then there is nothing to do but walk
about. I think the most pathetic sight to be seen in London is the
Strand on a Sunday night. The whole place is shut up, almost one might
say, hermetically sealed, except that Mooney's and Ward's and Romano's
are open. Along its splendid length parade crowds and crowds of Jew
couples and other wanderers from the far regions. They look lost. They
look like a Cup Tie crowd from the North. They don't walk; they drift.
They look helpless; they have an air expressive of: "Well, what the
devil shall we do _now_?" I have a grim notion that members of the
London County Council, observing them--if, that is, members of the
London County Council ever do penance by walking down the Strand on
Sunday--take to themselves unction. "Ah!" they gurgle in their hearts,
"ah!--beautiful. Nice, orderly crowd; all walking about nice and
orderly; enjoying themselves in the right way. Ah! Yes. We _like_ to see
the people enjoy themselves."
And, in their Christian way, they pat themselves on the back (if not too
stout) and go home to their cigars and liqueurs and whatever else they
may want in the way of worldly indulgence. It is Sunday.
Some years ago there was a delightful song that devastated New York. It
was a patriotic song, and it was called: "The sun is always shining on
Broadway." At the time, I translated this into English, for rendering at
a private show, the refrain being that the sun is always shining in the
Strand. So it is. Dull as the day may be elsewhere, there is always
light of some kind in the Strand. It is the gayest, most Londonish
street in London. It is jammed with Life, for it is the High Street of
the world. Men of every country and clime have walked down the Strand.
Whatever is to be found in other streets in other parts of the world is
to be found in the Strand. It is the homeliest, mateyest street in the
world. Let's all go down it!
But not--not, my dears, on Sundays. For a wise County Council has
decreed that whatsoever things are gay, whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are human and lovely--these things shall not be
thought upon on Sundays.
* * * * *
The English Sunday at home is in many cases even worse than the Sunday
out. Of course it has considerably improved since the hideous eighties,
but there are still survivals of the old Sabbath, not so much among the
mass of the people as among the wealthy. The new kindly Sabbath has
arisen with the new attitude of children towards parents. The children
of the L300-a-year parents are possessed of a natural pluck which is
lacking in the children of the L3,000-a-year. They know what they want
and they usually see that they get it.
Among the kindlier folk, in the suburbs, Sunday is the only day when
Father is really at home with the children, and it is made the most of.
It is the children's day. Morning, afternoon, and evening are given up
to them. In the summer there is the great treat of tea in the garden. In
the winter tea is taken in the room that is sometimes called the
"drawing-room" by Mother and the "reception-room" by the house-agent;
and there are all manner of delicate cakes and, perhaps, muffins, which
the youngsters are allowed to toast themselves.
After tea, Father romps with them, or reads to them from one of their
own books or magazines; or perhaps they roast chestnuts on the hearth,
or sing or recite to the "company." Too, they are allowed to sit up an
hour or so later, and in this last hour every kind of pagan amusement is
set going for their delight, so that they tumble at last to bed flushed
with laughter, and longing for the six days to pass so that Sunday shall
come again.
That is one domestic Sunday. But there are others. I like to think that
there are only about three others, but unfortunately I know that there
are over two thousand Sundays just like the one which I describe below.
Here Father and Mother are very successful, so successful that they live
in a big house near Queen's Gate, and keep five servants as well as a
motor-car. Sunday is a little different here from week-days, in that the
children are allowed to spend the day outside the nursery, with their
parents. They go to church in the morning with Mother and Father. They
dine at midday with Mother and Father. In the afternoon they go to The
Children's Service. They have tea in the drawing-room with Mother and
Father. Father and Mother are Calvinists.
In the evening, Father and Mother sit, one on either side of the hearth;
Father reading a weekly religious paper devoted to the creed of Calvin;
Mother reading another religious paper devoted to the creed of Calvin.
Throughout the day the children are never allowed to sing or hum any
tune that may be called profane. They are never allowed to hop, skip, or
jump. They are told that Jesus will not be pleased with them if they do.
They are not allowed to read secular books or look at pagan pictures. In
the afternoon, they are given Dore's Bible and an illustrated "Paradise
Lost" or "Pilgrim's Progress." In the evening, after tea (which carries
with it one piece of seed-cake as a special treat), they are seated,
with injunctions to silence, at the table, away from the fire, and set
to finding Bible texts from one given keyword. The one who finds most
texts gets a cake to go to bed with; the other gets nothing.
So Ethel and Johnnie are at work, from six in the evening until nine
o'clock, scratching through a small-type Bible for flavourless
aphorisms. Ethel is set to find six texts, and finds four of them, when
she perceives something funny in one of them. She shows it to Johnnie,
and they both giggle. Father looks up severely, and warns her. Then
Johnnie, not to be outdone, remembers something he has heard about at
school, and hunts through the Book of Kings to find it. He finds it. It
is funnier still; and he shows it to Ethel. She giggles again. Father
looks up reprovingly at her. She tries to maintain composure of face,
but just then Johnnie pinches her knee, so that she squeals with
long-pent-up laughter.
Father and Mother get up. Her Bible is taken from her. Her pencil and
paper are taken from her. She is made to stand on the hearthrug, with
her hands behind her, while Mother and Father lecture her on Blasphemy.
The bell is then rung, and Nurse is sent for. She is handed over to
Nurse, with pitiless instructions. Nurse then takes her to her room,
where she is undressed, put to bed, and severely slapped.
It is Sunday.... Over her little bed is a text in letters of flame:
"_Thou God seest me!_" After burning with indignation and humiliation
for some time, she falls at last to sleep, with an unspoken prayer of
thanksgiving to her Heavenly Father that to-morrow is Monday.
AT RANDOM
_TWO IN A TAXI_
_From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green,
We flash through misty fields of light.
Oh, many lovely things are seen
From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green!
We reign together, king and queen,
Over the lilied London night.
From Gloucester Square to Golder's Green,
We flash through misty fields of light._
_So, driver, drive your taxi well
To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square.
This dreaming night may cast a spell;
So, driver, drive your taxi well.
I have a wondrous tale to tell:
Immortal Love is now your fare!
So, driver, drive your taxi well
To Golder's Green from Gloucester Square!_
AT RANDOM
I originally planned this chapter to cover A German Night amid the two
German colonies of Great Charlotte Street and Highbury; but I have a
notion that the public has read all that it wants to read about Germans
in London. Anyway, neither spot is lovable. I have never been able to
determine whether the Germans went to Highbury and the Fitzroy regions
because they found their atmosphere ready-made, or whether the districts
have acquired their atmosphere from the German settlers. Certainly they
have everything that is most Germanically oppressive: mist, large women,
lager and leberwurst, and a moral atmosphere of the week before last
that conveys to the mind the physical sensations of undigested cold
sausage. So I was leaving Great Charlotte Street, and its Kaiser, its
_kolossal_ and its _kultur_, to hop on the first motor-'bus that passed,
and let it take me where it would--a favourite trick of mine--when I ran
into Georgie.
I have mentioned Georgie before. Georgie is one of London's echoes--one
of those sturdy Bohemians who stopped living when Sala died. If you
frequent the Strand or Fleet Street or Oxford Street you probably know
him by sight. He is short. He wears a frock-coat, buttoned at the waist
and soup-splashed at the lapels. His boots are battered, his trousers
threadbare. He carries jaunty eye-glasses, a jaunty silk hat, and shaves
once a week. He walks with both hands in trousers pockets and feet
out-splayed. The poor laddie is sadly outmoded, but he doesn't know it.
He still lunches on a glass of stout and biscuit-and-cheese at "The Bun
Shop" in the Strand. He stills drinks whisky at ten o'clock in the
morning. He still clings to the drama of the sixties, and he still
addresses every one as Laddie or My Dear.
He hailed me in Oxford Street, and cried: "Where now, laddie, where
now?"
"I don't know," I said. "Anywhere."
"Then I'll come with you."
So we wandered. It was half-past seven. The night was purple, and
through a gracious mist the lights glittered with subdued brilliance.
London was in song. Cabs and 'buses and the evening crowd made its
music. I heard it calling me. So did Georgie. With tacit sympathy we
linked arms and strolled westwards, and dropped in at one of the big
bars, and talked.
We talked of the old days--before I was born. Georgie told me of the
crowd that decorated the place in the nineties: that company of
feverish, foolish verbal confectioners who set themselves Byronically to
ruin their healths and to write self-pitiful songs about the ruins. Half
a dozen elegant Sadies and Mamies were at the American end of the bar,
with their escorts, drinking Horse's Necks, Maiden's Prayers, Mother's
Milks, Manhattans, and Scotch Highballs. Elsewhere the Cockney revellers
were drinking their eternal whisky-and-sodas or beers, and their
salutations led Georgie to a disquisition on the changing toasts of the
last twenty years. To-day it is something short and sharp: either
"Hooray!" or "Here's fun!" or "Cheero!" or a non-committal "Wow-wow!"
Ten years back it was: "Well, Laddie, here's doing it again!" or "Good
health, old boy, and may we get all we ask for!" And ten years before
that it was something even more grandiloquent.
From drink we drifted to talking about food; and I have already told you
how wide is Georgie's knowledge of the business of feeding in London. We
both hate the dreary, many-dished dinners of the hotels, and we both
love the cosy little chop-houses, of which a few only now remain: one or
two in Fleet Street, and perhaps half a dozen in the little alleys off
Cornhill and Lombard Street. I agree, too, with Georgie in deploring the
passing of the public-house mid-day ordinary. From his recollections, I
learn that the sixties and seventies were the halcyon days for
feeding--indeed, the only time when Londoners really lived; and an
elderly uncle of mine, who, at that time, went everywhere and knew
everybody in the true hard-up Bohemia, tells me that there were then
twenty or thirty taverns within fifty yards of Ludgate Circus, where the
shilling ordinary was a feast for an Emperor, and whose interiors
answered to that enthusiastic description of Disraeli's in
_Coningsby_--perhaps the finest eulogy of the English inn ever written.
Unhappily, they are gone to make way for garish, reeking hotels and
restaurants for which one has to dress. Those that remain are mere
drinking-places; you can, if you wish, get a dusty sandwich, but the
barmaid regards you as an idiot if you ask for one. But there are
exceptions.
"The Cock," immortalized by Tennyson, is one of the few survivals of the
simple, and its waiters are among the best in London. As a rule, the
English waiter is bad and the foreign waiter is good. But when you get a
good English waiter you get the very best waiter in the world. There is
Albert--no end of a good fellow. He shares with all English waiters a
fine disregard for form; yet he has that indefinable majesty which no
Continental has ever yet assimilated; and he has, too, a nice sense of
the needs of those who work in Fleet Street. You can go to Albert (that
isn't his true name) and say--
"Albert, I haven't much money to-day. What's good and what do I get most
of for tenpence?" Or "Albert--I've had a cheque to-day. What's best--and
damn the expense?" And Albert advises you in each emergency, and whether
you tip him twopence or a shilling you receive the same polite "Much
obliged, sir!"
Georgie and I began to remember feeds we had had in London--real feeds,
I mean; not "dinners," but the kind of food you yearn for when you are
hungry, and have, perhaps, only eleven pennies in your pocket. At these
times you are not interested in Rumpelmayer's for tea, or Romano's for
lunch, or the Savoy for dinner. Nix. It's Lockhart's, The A B C.,
cook-shops, coffee-stalls, cab-shelters, and the hundred other what-not
feeding-bins of London. I talked of the Welsh rarebits at "The Old
Bell," the theatrical house in Wellington Street, and of the Friday
night tripe-and-onion suppers at "The Plough," Clapham. Georgie thought
that his fourpenny feed in the cab-shelter at Duncannon Street was an
easy first, until I asked him if he knew the eating-houses of the South
London Road, and his hard face cracked to a smile. I was telling him
how, when I first had a definite commission from a tremendous editor, I
had touched a friend for two shillings, and, walking home, had stopped
in the London Road and had ordered dishes which were billed on the menu
as _Pudding_, _boiled and cauli_. FOLLOW _Golden Roll_; and this, capped
by a pint of hot tea, for sevenpence, when he burst into my words with--
"The South London Road, laddie? You ask _me_ if _I_ know the South
London Road? Come again, boy, come again; I don't get you." He lay back
in his chair, and recited, with a half-smile: "The--South--London--Road!
God, what sights for the hungry! Let's see--how do they go? Good Pull Up
For Carmen on the right. Far Famed Eel Pie and Tripe House opposite.
Palace Restaurant, Noted For Sausages, next. Then The Poor Man's Friend.
Then Bingo's Fish Bar. Coffee Caravanserai farther up. And--Lord!--S. P.
and O. everywhere for threepence-halfpenny. What a sight, boy! Ever
walked down it at the end of a day without a meal and without a penny? I
should say so. And nearly flung bricks through the windows--what?
Sausages swimming in bubbling gravy. Or tucked in, all snug and comfy,
with a blanket of mashed. Tomatoes frying themselves, and whining for
the fun of it. Onions singing. Saveloys entrenched in pease-pudding.
Jellied eels and stewed tripe and eel-pies at twopence, threepence, and
sixpence. Irish stew at sevenpence on the Come-Again style--as many
follows as you want for the same money. _Do_ I know the South London
Road? Does a duck know the water?"
We talked of other streets in London which are filled with shop-windows
glamorous of prospect for the gourmet; and not only for the gourmet, but
for all simple-minded folk. Georgie talked of the toy-shops of Holborn.
He made gestures expressive of paradisiacal delight. He is one of the
few people I know who can sympathize with my own childishness. He never
snubs my enthusiasms or my discoveries. Other friends sit heavily upon
me when I display emotion over things like shops, taxicabs, dinners,
drinks, railway journeys, music-halls, and cry, "Tommy--for the Lord's
sake, _shut up!_" But Georgie understands. He understands why I cackle
with delight when the new Stores Catalogue arrives. (By the way, if ever
I made a list of the Hundred Best Books, number one would be an
Illustrated Stores Catalogue. What a wonderful bedside book it is! There
is surely nothing so provocative to the sluggish imagination. Open it
where you will, it fires an unending train of dreams. It is so full of
thousands of things which you simply must have and for which you have no
use at all, that you finally put it down and write a philosophic essay
on The Vanity of Human Wishes, and thereby earn three guineas.
Personally, I have found over a dozen short-story plots in the pages of
the Civil Service Stores List.)
When we tired of talking, Georgie inquired what we should do _now_. I
put it: suppose we took a stroll along Bankside to London Bridge, and
turned off to Bermondsey to take a taste of the dolours of the Irish
colony, and then follow the river to Cherry Gardens and cross to Wapping
by the Rotherhithe Tunnel; but he said No, and gave as his reason that
the little girls of the Irish and foreign quarters were too
distractingly lovely for him, as he is one of those unfortunates who
want every pretty thing they see and are miserable for a week if they
can't get it. His idea was to run over to Homerton. Did I know old
Jumbo? Fat old Jumbo. Jumbo, who kept Jumbo's, under the arches, where
you got cut from the joint, two veg., buggy-bolster, and cheese-roll. I
did. So to Jumbo's we went by the Stoke Newington 'bus, whose conductor
shouted imperatively throughout the journey: "Aw fez pliz!" though we
were the only passengers; and on the way I made a little, soft song, the
burden of which was: "I do love my table d'hote, but O you Good Pull Up
For Carmen!"
Jumbo received us with that slow good-humour which has made his business
what it is. He and his assistant, Dusty, a youngster of sixty-two who
cuts about like a newsboy, have worked together for so many years that
Dusty frequently tells his chief not to be such a Censored fool. Jumbo's
joints are good, and so are his steak-toad, sprouts, and baked, but his
steak-and-kidney puddings at fourpence are better. I had one of these,
garnished with "boiled and tops." Georgie had "leg, well done, chips,
and batter." I never knew a man who could do the commonplace with so
much natural dignity. He gave his order with the air of a viveur
planning a ten-course arrangement at Claridge's. He shouted for a
half-of-bitter with the solemnity of one who commands that two bottles
of dry Monopole be put on the ice. He is, too, the only man I know who
salutes his food. I have been at dinners in Wesleyan quarters like St.
John's Wood where heads of families have mumbled what they call Grace or
"asking a blessing"; but I have seen nothing so simply beautiful as
George's obeisance to his filled plate. He bows to Irish stew as others
dip to the altar.
While Dusty stalked a clean fork through a forest of dirty ones, Georgie
fired at him questions in which I had no part. Did Dusty remember the
show at Willie's about--how many was it?--twenty years ago? What a
NIGHT! Did he remember how Phil May had squirted the syphon down poor
old Pitcher's neck? And Clarence ... Clarence was fairly all out that
night--what? And next morning--when they met Jimmy coming down the steps
of the Garrick Club--_what?_
To all of which Dusty replied: "Ah, yes, sir. I should say so. That's
the idea, sir. Those was the days!" Then the dinner came along, and we
started on it. I prefer to be attended by Jumbo. Dusty's service of
steak-pudding is rather in the nature of a spar. Jumbo, on the other
hand, places your plate before you with the air of one doing something
sacramental.