of the restaurant tendency affords one particular pleasure, as
suggesting that the English are losing some of their dominant
insular fault of sullen individualism, and are becoming more
healthily disposed to the communal life.
Much less hopeful is the swelling grandeur of the London
gin-palace--the modern substitute for the pleasant tavern.
In mediæval times, if the earle saw a stately edifice with
stained-glass windows, statuary, and everything gorgeous, he
would enter with reverence to stoop his head; now, he goes in with
fourpence to soak it.
In mediæval times he would be seen crossing himself with the holy
water as he emerged; now, as he comes out, he wipes it off on his
coat tail.
In mediæval times, for their sins and sorrows and the glory of
God, the nobles built cathedrals. In this more vulgar age, for the
people's griefs and the lords' profit, England's nobility build
glorified pot-houses.
In mediæval times, our chivalry won their knighthood and titles by
spoiling the heathen at the sword's point; now, they secure peerages
by spoiling English men and women with adulterated and brutalising
liquors.
This is what we call the progress of civilisation--
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
But that is neither here nor there.
A TRUCE FROM BOOKS AND MEN
Dreaming, dozing,
Fallow, fallow, and reposing.
DR. MACKAY.
There is an old Dutch pier at Gorleston separating the open sea from
the mouth of the river that leads to Yarmouth. It is not ornamental;
it has no pavilion, no railings, no band, but only capstans, tarry
ropes, a small white-washed observatory, and--the most surprising
jumble of odd, cosy, sheltered nooks overhanging the blue water,
where one may sprawl all day in any garb and any posture, and,
soothed by the sea's lullaby, blink at the sun, or, with the aid of
our country's literature, go to sleep.
There is nothing to pay to go on, and our pier is therefore
frequented by no objectionable persons. It is true there are a few
mistaken damsels who sketch or paint the endless succession of
spectacular marvels laid on by tide and clouds; but I think they
mean no harm.
As for the apathetic individuals who come with bits of string and
worms, pretending to catch fish, everybody knows that they never
do; indeed, after observing them through several waking intervals,
I have come to the conclusion that their only object is to politely
aid our slumbers by the sight of their languidly deliberate
preparations, and calm, leisurely hours of uninterrupted waiting.
As for the rest of us, we are frankly, honestly, disreputably lazy,
and dowdily, drowsily sprawl and dawdle the daily clock-round.
If the wind be southerly, we take our nap on the river side of the
pier, and open our eyes at intervals to scan the fishing-boats with
flapping sails, as they depart to or return from their two months'
strife with wind and wave to reap for us the harvest of the sea.
Every vessel in Yarmouth's swarming fleet must round this pier's
windy point at coming in or going out, and cross the stream that
swiftly flows and whirls beneath our feet. All through the day, in
and out they pass, to and from their perilous work; late at night
we hail and greet them as they glide with majestic sail through the
reflected moonbeams, and disappear like huge, towering phantoms into
the darkness and mystery beyond.
[Illustration: GORLESTON PIER.]
These, with a few timber-laden steamers from Norway--their shifted
cargoes, sloping decks, and fearfully-listed hulls attesting often
to the fury of the Baltic gales--are the only link connecting us
with the far distant world of commerce to which we once belonged.
These, and--I must not forget the great morning and evening events
of our drowsy days--the two big passenger steamers that set out
before breakfast for Clacton and London, and the two that heavily
swing into the narrow channel at dusk, with ever fresh wonder to our
awakened and densely assembled holiday population.
When the wind is northerly we shift over to the south side
of our pier and face the Gorleston bay and beach. Lo, what a
transformation! No trace of the workaday world remains. A scene of
pure enchantment, of sunny brightness and rest.
A semicircle of crumbling sandcliffs forms the background of the
bay; and from the verge of a narrow streak of yellow sand, without
a pebble, stretches the green, the blue, the yellow sea--nestling
in its intimate nooks, splashing against the wooden promenade,
or dashing with imposing affectation of fierceness over our
promiscuously scattered breakwaters of granite.
We have one hotel, incongruously conspicuous on the neck of ground
dividing sea from river at the pier's base; but we have no theatres,
no music-halls, no punch-and-judy show, no niggers, no "amusements"
(!!!) of any sort. We have a few bathing-machines upon the beach,
and a vast picturesque camp of bathing-tents, but not any other sign
of commercial enterprise. There is no esplanade to swagger on; no
electric lights to set off our beauties by night; no illumination
over all the "promenade" and mignonette gardens and pier after
sunset, except the light of the moon and stars.
We _can_ see the garish lights of Yahoo Yarmouth, flaunting through
the night, two miles away; but, if we can help it, we don't.
* * * * *
The only thing we do with assiduity is bathing, unless we belong to
the army of bare-legged water-babies who unceasingly "paddle" and
build castles on the beach.
Sometimes we carry our day-dreams in small boats across the
glistering sea, and lazily drift or tack before the languid breeze.
It has even occurred that foolish relapses into energy have borne
us upon bicycles through leafy lanes to lazier Suffolk Broads; but
these excesses are rare and brief. No man could face these sleepy
inland waters and preserve an active spirit; the apathetic willows
on the banks dreamily curtsey as if too tired to hold up their heads.
But let Dr. Mackay, who opened this chapter, also speak the last
word--
There's a humming of bees beneath the lime,
And the deep blue heaven of a southern clime
Is not more beautifully bright
Than this English sky with its islets white,
And its Alp-like clouds, so snowy fair!--
The birch leaves dangle in balmy air.
A RUDE AWAKENING
Men must work and women must weep;
There's little to earn and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
What is this Life at all, and what its purport? Is Good its aim or
evil? If roses be fair, what need of thorns? God sends youth and
health and beauty; what devil brings sickness, grief, and decay?
When I wrote the irrelevant, drowsy chapter preceding this, the sun
shone so kindly, and so benignly Nature beamed, that Care was as a
dream of what never could have been.
To live was to be blessed; to think was to enjoy. Nature was a
doting mother that fed us with bounty and kissed us fondly to rest;
the earth a sunny garden; heaven a waste of luxurious fancy.
How blind I must have been! What a glorious blindness it would be,
if----
Ah! "If"!
* * * * *
My drop from the rosy clouds began pleasantly enough. I was nooning
by the river-side, when an ancient, second-hand Danish pirate, with
improbable pantomime whiskers, like tangled seaweed, fixedly looking
at the lower part of my waistcoat, casually remarked, "Seems to me
you're pining away down there."
"Yes," I answered briskly, "I'm not the man I was."
"No," said he meditatively, "we're none of us as young as we was;
but, come, you can't be more than forty-three."
"I am," I answered indignantly, "no more than thirty-six."
"Well," said he, with what may have been a consolatory intent, "we
can't help our looks, none of us. I'm judging you'll not be for the
lifeboat when you're my age."
I had decided to speak to him no more, but an undefined hope to get
the better of his sauciness prompted me to ask, "What age may that
be?"
"Fifty-five," he answered.
"You look," said I vindictively, "a great deal older."
Scarce had the words left my mouth than I was ashamed of them. I
saw for the first time now that he was crippled, and walked with a
stick. Rough weather and a hard life had left on him a low-water
mark of rust and wear and decay. But he answered, gently enough,
"It's like enough I may. I've been very bad this three week. Got
tangled in a rope and fell overboard, and was dragged ashore through
the water from the pierhead to the harbour. My uncle and two other
young fellows was in the boat, but"--
The "two other young fellows" was tempting, but I did not smile.
"They couldn't get me in," he continued unconsciously, "and I got
knocked about a bit. My shoulder was main bad. I'm crawling about
again, but it's hard work doing nothing."
I repeated the words to myself as I walked away, "hard work doing
nothing"--especially when "doing nothing" means a bare cupboard and
hungry children, eh?
Gorleston is perhaps not altogether so cheerful as I thought.
Unsneck the door to Care and you might as well take it off its
hinges.
Late the same night, I was talking to the watchman at the end of the
pier. A Yarmouth fishing-smack sailed out into the gloom.
"Rough night," the watchman cried to the skipper.
"Ay, ay," replied a gruff voice from below; and a moment later the
smack was gone.
"Better here than on that boat to-night," I observed, as the black
sail faded and merged in the black cloud.
"Ay," the watchman answered; "but they'll see worse before they see
home again. There's queer weather to be found on the Dogger Bank
in an eight weeks' trawling. I mind me of three hundred and sixty
drowned in one March gale, and upwards of two hundred lost two or
three years ago one Christmas night. Then there's always the risk of
collisions in the fog, men washed overboard in a gale, or crippled
in the small boat when they put out, as they must whatever the
weather, when the Billingsgate steamer comes round in the night for
the fish."
"H'm! And what pay sends willing men to face these risks?"
"Penny an hour, from time they start till they get back. That's
fourteen shilling a week."
"And when they come home?"
"Pay stops."
"God! how can their women and children live?"
"Nay, now you're asking something. But they're better off than them
as waits ashore all winter, and can't get a job."
"Fourteen shillings! Why do they stand it?"
"Because they can't help theirsels. There's too many waiting to take
t' place o' them as has a job."
"Have they no trade union?"
"They've trouble enough to keep theirsels in work; who'd keep them
if they went on strike?"
"Fourteen shillings a week! It's shameful."
"Happen it is, and happen the shame is not so much the men's as
yours."
"Mine? How?"
"I suppose you buy and eat fish?"
"Yes, and pay the price I'm asked; if I paid twice as much, would
the fishermen get the money?"
"Nay, I don't know. We look to you clever folk in London to settle
these things."
They are not awe-struck by the superiority of the "clever folk from
London," these outspoken men of the sea. From the taciturn solitary
policeman, who looks on us with undisguised contempt, to the ancient
mariners by the river-side, who gaze on us with the puzzled stare
that a Viking might have cast on a French dancing-master, the
natives give one the painful impression that they regard us as
prodigies of ignorance and uselessness.
But--we have money. People who don't seem to know anything or to
do anything always have. And they that have to wrest sustenance
from the churlish sea at Gorleston, are disposed to do much for
money--even to tolerate inquisitive, pompously patronising,
incessantly cackling Cockneys.
I went down to the sea thinking to mend my tired body with the blow
of the lusty spray, but I am judging 'twas perhaps my mind most
needed change of air.
They are not so much our lungs that get stifled in the cities as our
brains and hearts. We are so hemmed in with glittering shams and
lies that we forget Truth's features.
What do we know of work and trade, we that scramble for gold dust
in London? What do we know of Life, we that seek it in the perfumed
mire and corruption of the West End? They are not the usurers and
money-changers that make the wealth of nations, nor the painted
splendours of Babylon that ripen our harvests, nor the swinish
orgies of Sodom and Gomorrah that make the pulses beat with healthy
joy of life.
One stews in London's vitiated atmosphere, and one forgets. One's
perceptions grow numb, and dull and blunted; one's knowledge
twisted, warped, awry. We are made dizzy by the rush and whirl, and
cheated by specious shows and make-believes. Our days and nights
are passed in fever, our thoughts are as the babbling of a grim
delirium, and there is no health in us.
Contango? The odds for the Leger? The new ballet?
"We went out twice that night," said the lifeboatman; "one of our
men broke his arm th' first trip, and he wur main wild when he
couldn't go th' second time."
"And did you save them all?"
"Ay, we got 'em all off--both lots; though they'd give up hope. They
couldn't see us till we came close up to them, for it was a dirty
night, and the sea was running high, but they heard the cheers we
give them when we got within calling distance, poor things."
That makes a better picture than the Stock Exchange or Piccadilly
Circus. The thought of the ships that sink, of the men and women and
children that go down into the cold depths, "their eyes and mouths
to be filled with the brown sea sand"--that is not good to think of.
But the picture of the rescue, is not that glorious?
The sound of the human cheer across the roar of Nature's
battle--think of it in the ears of the crew that had "given up
hope"! The thrill, the gladness, the doubt, the eager lookout.
The cheer again, clearer, huskier, certain now, and full of brave
comfort. A chance then for life? A chance for the wailing women and
the weeping bairns? Then a glimpse, deep down in the great trough
of the sea, of a boat staggering and rolling amidst the waves,
manfully propelled, perceptibly approaching, despite wind and sleet
and drenching wave, with rough men's voices giving promise of life
through the darkness of the storm!
Ah! gentlemen of the Spiers & Pond and money-making world, isn't
it a brave picture to think of? The cooling dash of ocean spray is
delightfully refreshing. To think that our race can still breed
heroes; that even we, if we could or would but shake off the Old
Man of the Earth that sits upon our shoulders, might perhaps be
heroes too; that we too might risk our lives to snatch storm-tossed
unfortunates from the clutch of death--is it not a blessed thought?
It is the custom of our age to boast of its civilisation. When
we stand erect we fear to hurtle the stars with our foreheads as
we pass under. We smile upon our accumulations of wealth and the
monuments of our commerce, and esteem ourselves the crowning
triumphs of evolution, the ultimate perfection, Nature's finished
masterpieces. But how small, how mean, and how insignificant we
Londoners look by the side of these stalwart and fearless fishermen
of Suffolk and Norfolk.
They know nothing of Westralians, S. P. prices, futures, or the
Sisters Bobalink's new dance; but what a lot they have to teach us!
* * * * *
The weather changes swiftly at Gorleston, and when the white
foam-horses ride over the hidden sand-banks, even a Cockney-tripper
may feel the sense of peril.
Ever since we came we have seen the gaunt masts of one wreck
spectrally haunting our feast from behind the lightship in the east.
Now there is another on a sand-bank close to shore, a little to the
north of the river's mouth.
It had been a glorious day, but towards evening the storm-clouds
gathered and the wind rose in fitful gusts. A Baltic steamer,
clearing out of the harbour at dusk, blocked up the mouth of the
river for some hours owing to a fouled anchor, till at last, her
cable being cut, she succeeded in getting to sea.
Meantime, a Yarmouth trawler, returning to port with a week's catch
of fish, was misled by the lights of the disabled vessel, and,
manoeuvring to get clear, backed on to the dangerous North Sand,
whose floor is thickly strewed with remains of former wrecks.
From the pier, through the blackening night, we watched the crew's
futile efforts to get off again. It was very like a fly's efforts to
escape from a spider's web, and evidently as profitless. The more
they struggled, the deeper in the sand they sank.
Now, boom! through the night came the bang of a great gun. The
Admiralty men in charge of the Board of Trade life-saving apparatus
were about to begin operations. We saw lights flickering to and fro
on the Denes--the low bank of land between the river and the sea.
Presently, with a prodigious whiz, up to the black sky and across
the ship shot the rocket, bearing the lifeline that would bring
the shipwrecked mariners to land! Before this, however, one of the
five lifeboats maintained on this dangerous coast had been safely
launched through the surf, and reached the wreck almost as soon as
the line.
But neither line nor boat would the captain of the smack accept: to
leave his ship meant loss of property, and property in England is
of all things the most sacred.
The night by this time had become wild and fearful. The wind
shrieked viciously; the waves broke ashore with a hungry roar; and
from the swart clouds came down squalls of rain, merging land and
lights and sea and sky in one blur of desolation.
There was no more to be seen. The crew of the stranded trawler
deemed it safe to remain where they were. So we curious Cockneys,
perceiving no hope of further fresh sensations, hastened us home to
cosy beds and warmth.
* * * * *
I had just gone to sleep when a boom that shook the bed roused me
with a start.
I jumped up and went to the window.
A signal-rocket had been fired from the coastguard station opposite
our lodging.
[Illustration: THE LIFEBOAT.]
I slipped on some clothes and went out. The night was wilder than
ever, the driving rain heavier, the wind louder, the sea rougher. I
saw the coastguard-men bury themselves in oilskins, and sally out
with lanterns to their station on the Denes. When they took boat to
cross the river, I had perforce to leave, and so, wet through, went
back to my bedroom window.
For hours I watched the fitful lights on the Denes, and the wavering
light on the mast of the ship beyond. Once, in the staring light
of a "flare," I saw her plainly--her stark, white, sloping deck
looming ghostly through the darkness; then, another rocket-line went
flashing across the black waste, and I hoped the crew were safe.
* * * * *
Next morning I learned from our landlady's son that he had been
all night in the lifeboat; that despite the smack-skipper's first
refusal to leave his ship the lifeboat had stood by him for hours,
the waves washing over the stranded vessel the while; that, at
last, finding the skipper obstinate, the lifeboatmen had returned
to shore, but had scarcely landed when the new view which isolation
lent to his perilous position, caused the skipper to signal for
their return. They went back accordingly, and at three in the
morning safely landed the shipwrecked crew in Gorleston.
All through the next day, without rest or respite, the hardy young
boatman unceasingly engaged on salvage duty. I accidentally heard,
by the way, that on the previous day he had plunged twice into the
sea from the breakwater to save two children who had fallen in--for
which service he was munificently rewarded with five shillings.
At night, in answer to a question, he told me, "Sometimes in winter
we've been out as much as three times in one night, and been at it
again the night after. You soon get used to it, you know."
H'm! I _don't_ know: I only know that after that night I was laid
up with a chill, whilst he made no more of his labours, his perils
and exposure than if they had been part of a picnic; and I also know
that when, in inquiring about my health, he wistfully struggled to
tune his storm-tanned hardy face to a note of decent sympathy, he
made me feel ashamed of my lubberly fragility.
Yet--tut, tut! Can I not win more pay for a nice little cackling
article about his work, than this dreadnought will get for saving
six men's and two children's lives?
Since everything is justly ordained in our best of all possible
societies, my greater gain must prove, despite appearances, that I
am this man's superior.
Besides, he speaks to me with manifest respect, and calls me "Sir."
A few nights later, there was another gale; a trawler was driven
ashore, and her crew saved by the rocket apparatus.
Two or three nights later a Lowestoft smack was run down by a
Norwegian barque, and the skipper and mate were drowned; one left a
wife and four children, the other a wife and nine!
These casualties are happening constantly--they are so common they
are scarcely reported, even in local papers; but what becomes of the
widows and orphans?
A man's wages on the trawlers are 14s. a week, _when his boat is at
sea_.
"They ought to be included in the Compensation Act," I suggested to
a boatman.
"Who is to pay the compensation?" he asked.
I suggested the smack owners.
"Oh, they couldn't afford it"; they couldn't afford more wages;
couldn't afford anything. They also were to be numbered amongst
those deserving unfortunate classes of disinterested British
capitalists who are living on their losses. Yet one doesn't hear
of _their_ starving in the winter, of _their_ being drowned in
quest of a precarious livelihood, of _their_ widows and orphans
being gathered into the workhouse. Nor the boatbuilders, nor the
sailmakers, nor the Billingsgate "wholesalers," nor any of the men
connected with the trade, except those who do the actual work of
catching the fish.
Their poverty is apparent to all the world; the difficulty of
getting even a bare living by the fisheries is bringing competition
for employment even into the lifeboat. Lifeboatmen may earn 30s. in
a winter's night by going out to a wreck, and may get as much as £10
per man in one haul if they recover salvage. That is "big money" to
fishermen; so it comes to pass that even that business is tarnished
with a sordid taint.
"The coastguard had no business to fire their rocket-line," said a
fisherman to me, speaking of the wreck above described; "we was in
the water first and was entitled to the pay. Besides," he continued,
following up a train of thought which is horrible to pursue, "they
needn't be in such a hurry to take the bread from us lifeboatmen:
_it's only half a crown each they'd get for firing the rocket_."
I heard ugly hints of vessels purposely cast away to recover
insurance; and I heard a well-dressed townsman, who spoke with
considerable warmth, and evidently with knowledge, utter bitter
sneers at the rapacity of certain boatmen who had "made salvage a
business," and who "always won their actions-at-law against the
owners because counsel artfully worked on the jurymen's feelings by
glowing accounts of the men's pluck and perils."
"And do you deny the peril of the work?" I asked.
"No," he admitted, "it's risky enough, but it pays better than
fishing, and that's about as risky."
"You would not care to do it yourself, I presume?"
"Not me!" he answered, with a chuckle; "I should hope I'd got a
better mark on. But to make a ten-pound note, those beggars, why,
they'd face hell!"
* * * * *
If there be a devil his name is Money.
Fresh from the hands of the gods, we are the exquisite instruments
upon which they play divine music. But comes Money to play upon
us, and the strings become jangled, harsh, and out of tune. If
there were no money--if none were tempted for lack of it to sell
themselves, if none were driven by excess of it to wallow in porcine
gutters--how brave, noble, and lovable were Man!
The stock question that Yorkshire weavers ask of one another on
meeting, is one we might fitly ask of our Civilisation, "What soorts
are yo' makin' now?"
The nearer the knuckle of civilisation we seek, the less shall we
find of the cool, fearless, manly air of my Gorleston lifeboatman.
Civilisation is not making those "soorts," Nature preserves the
monopoly of manufacture; civilisation succeeds only in spoiling
them.
LONDON PRIDE AND COCKNEY CLAY
From drinking fiery poison in a den
Crowded with tawdry girls and squalid men,
Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight:
I wake from day dreams to this real night.
JAMES THOMSON.