a refreshment of the soul for the visitors from Streatham and Ealing.
Soho's patrons to-day have a furtive, guilty look about them. You see,
they are trying to be happy in war-time. No more do you see in the cafés
the cold-eyed anarchists and the petty bourgeois and artisans from the
foreign warehouses of the locality. In their place are heavy-eyed women,
placid and monosyllabic, and much khaki and horizon blue. Many of the
British soldiers, officers and privates, are men who have not yet been
out, and are experimenting with their French among the French girls who
have taken the places of the swift-footed, gestic Luigi, François or
Alphonse; others have come from France, where they have discovered the
piquancy of French cooking, and desire no more the solidities of the
"old English" chop-house.
Over all is an atmosphere of restraint. Gone are the furious argument
and the preposterous accord. Gone are the colour and the loud lights and
the evening noise. Soho is marking time, until the good days return--if
ever. Not in 1917 do you see Old Compton Street as a line of warm and
fragrant café-windows; instead, you stumble drunkenly through a dim,
murky lane, and take your chance by pushing the first black door that
exudes a smell of food. Gone, too, are those exotic foods that brought
such zest to the jaded palate. The macaroni and spaghetti now being
manufactured in London are poor substitutes for the real thing, being
served in long, flat strips instead of in the graceful pipe form of
other days. Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, Gruyère, Port Salut, Strachini
and other enchanting cheeses are unobtainable; and you may cry in vain
for edible snails and the savoury stew of frogs' legs. True, the Chinese
café in Regent Street can furnish for the adventurous stomach such
trifles as black eggs (guaranteed thirty years old), sharks' fins at
seven shillings a portion, stewed seaweed, bamboo shoots, and sweet
birds'-nests; but Regent Street is beyond the bounds of Soho.
Nevertheless, if you attend carefully, and if you are lucky, you may
still catch in Old Compton Street a faint echo of its graces and
picturesque melancholy. You may still see and hear the sombre Yid, the
furious Italian, the yodelling Swiss, and the deprecating French,
hanging about the dozen or so coffee-bars that have appeared since 1914.
A few of these places existed in certain corners of London long before
that date, but it is only lately that the Londoner has discovered them
and called for more. The Londoner--I offer this fact to all students of
national traits--must always lean when taking his refreshment. Certain
gay and festive gentlemen, who constitute an instrument of order called
the Central Control Board, forbid him to lean in those places where, of
old, he was accustomed to lean; at any rate, he is only allowed to lean
during certain defined hours. You might think that he would have gladly
availed himself of this opportunity for resting awhile by sitting at a
marble-topped table and drinking coffee or tea, or--horrid
thought!--cocoa. But no; he isn't happy unless he leans over his
refreshment; and the café-bar has supplied his demands. There is
something in leaning against a bar which entirely changes one's outlook.
You may sit at a table and drink whisky-and-soda, and yet not achieve a
tithe of the expansiveness that is yours when you are leaning against a
bar and drinking dispiriting stuff like coffee or sirop. Maybe the
physical attitude reacts on the mind, and tightens up certain cords or
sinews, or eases the blood-pressure; anyway, fears, doubts, and cautions
seem to vanish in these little corners of France, and momentarily the
old animation of Soho returns.
In these places you may perchance yet capture for a fleeting space the
will-o'-the-wisperie of other days: movement and festal colour; laughter
and quick tears; the warm jest and the darkling mystery that epitomize
the city of all cities; and the wanton, rose-winged graces that flutter
about the fair head of M'selle Lolotte, as she hands you your café
nature and an April smile for sweetening, carry to you a breath of the
glitter and spaciousness of old time. You do not know Lolotte, perhaps!
Thousand commiserations, M'sieu! What damage! Is Lolotte lovely and
delicate? But of a loveliness of the most ravishing! The shining hair
and the eyes of the most disturbing! Lolotte is in direct descent from
Mimi Pinson, half angel and half puss.
Soldiers of all the Allied armies gather about her crescent-shaped bar
after half-past nine of an evening. The floor is sawdusted. The counter
is sloppy with overflows of coffee. Lips and nose receive from the air
that bitter tang derived only from the smoke of Maryland tobacco. The
varied uniforms of the patrons make a harmony of debonair gaiety with
the many-coloured bottles of cordials and sirops.
"_Pardon, m'sieu!_" cries the poilu, as he accidentally jogs the arm by
which Sergeant Michael Cassidy is raising his coffee-cup.
"_Oh, sarner fairy hang, mossoo! Moselle, donnay mwaw urn Granny Dean._"
"_M'sieu parle français, alors?_"
"_Ah, oui. Jer parle urn purr._"
And another supporting column is added to the structure of the Entente.
Over in the corner stands a little fat fellow. That corner belongs to
him by right of three years' occupation. He is 'Ockington from a nearby
printing works. Ask 'Ockington what he thinks about these 'ere
coffee-bars.
"Ah," he'll say, "I like these Frenchified caffies. Grand idea, if you
ask me. Makes yeh feel as though you was abroad-like. Gives yeh that
Lazy-Fare feelin'. I bin abroad, y'know. Dessay you 'ave, too, shouldn't
wonder. I don't blame yeh. See what yeh can while yeh can, 'ats what I
say. My young Sid went over to Paris one Bang Koliday, 'fore the war,
an' he come back as different again. Yerce, I'm all fer the French
caffies, I am. Nicely got up, I think. Good meoggerny counter; and this
floor and the walls--all done in that what-d'ye call it--mosey-ac. What
I alwis say is this: the French is a gay nation. Gay. And you feel it
'ere, doncher? Sort of cheers you up, like, if yer know what I mean, to
drop in 'ere for a minute or two.... Year or two ago, now, after a rush
job at the Works, I used to stop at a coffee-stall on me way 'ome late
at night, an' 'ave a penny cup o' swipes--yerce, an' glad _of_ it. But
the difference in the stuff they give yer 'ere--don't it drink lovely
and smooth?"
Then his monologue is interrupted by the electric piano, which some one
has fed with pennies; and your ear is charmed or tortured by the latest
revue music or old favourites from Paris and Naples--"Marguerite," "Sous
les ponts de Paris," "Monaco," the Tripoli March. If you appear
interested in the piano, whose voice Lolotte loves, she will offer to
toss you for the next penn'orth. Never does she lose. She wins by the
simple trick of snatching your penny away the moment you lift your hand
from it, and gurgling delightedly at your discomfiture.
No wonder the coffee-bar has become such a feature of London life in
this time of war. Leaning, in Lolotte's bar, is a real and not a forced
pleasure. In the old days one could lean and absorb the drink of one's
choice; but amid what company and with what service! Who could possibly
desire to exchange fatigued inanities with the vacuous vulgarities who
administer the ordinary London bar; who seem, like telephone girls, to
have taken lessons from some insane teacher of elocution, with their
"Nooh riarly?" expressive of incredulity; and their "Is yewers a
Scartch, Mr. Iggulden?" But in Lolotte's bar, talk is bright, sometimes
distinctly clever, and one lingers over one's coffee, chaffering with
her for--well, ask 'Ockington how long he stays.
But Lolotte is not always gay. Sometimes she will tell you stories of
Paris. There is a terrible story which she tells when she is feeling
triste. It is the story of a girl friend of hers with whom she worked
in Paris. The girl grew ill; lost her work; and earned her living by the
only possible means, until she grew too ill for that. One night Lolotte
met her wearily walking the streets. She had been without food for two
days, and had that morning been turned from her lodging. Suddenly, as
they passed a florist's, she darted through its doors and inquired the
price of some opulent blooms at the further end of the shop. The
shop-man turned towards them, and, as he turned, she dexterously
snatched a bunch of white violets from a vase on the counter. The price
of the orchids, she decided, was too high, and she came out.
Lolotte, who had seen the trick from the doorway, inquired the reason
for the theft. And the answer was:
"_Eh, bien; il faut avoir quelquechose quand on va rencontrer le bon
Dieu._"
Two days later her body, with a bunch of white violets fastened at the
neck, was recovered from the Seine.
OUT OF TOWN
It was an empty day, in the early part of the year, and I was its very
idle singer; so idle that I was beginning to wonder whether there would
be any Sunday dinner for me. I took stock of my possessions in coin, and
found one-and-ten-pence-halfpenny. Was I downhearted? Yes. But I didn't
worry, for when things are at their worst, my habit is always to fold my
hands and trust. Something always happens.
Something happened on this occasion: a double knock at the door and a
telegram. It was from the most enlightened London publisher, whose firm
has done so much in the way of encouraging young writers, and it asked
me to call at once. I did so.
"Like to go to Monte Carlo?" he asked.
When I had recovered from the swoon, I begged him to ask another.
"Here's an American millionaire," he said, "writing from Monte Carlo.
He wants to write a book, and he wants some assistance. How would it
suit you?"
I said it would suit me like a Savile Row outfit of clothes.
"When can you go?"
"Any old time."
"Right. You'd better wire him, and tell him I told you to. Don't let
yourself go cheap. Good-bye."
I didn't fall on his neck in an outburst of gratitude: he wouldn't have
liked it. But I yodelled and chirruped all the way to the nearest
post-office, having touched a friend for ten shillings on the strength
of the stunt. All that day and the next, telegrams passed between Monte
Carlo and Balham. I asked a noble salary and expenses, and a wire came
back: "Start at once." I replied: "No money." Ten pounds were delivered
at my doorstep next morning, with the repeated message "Start at once."
But starting at once, in war-time, was not so easily done. There was a
passport to get. That meant three days' lounging in a little wooden hut
in the yard of the Foreign Office. Having got the passport, I spent four
hours in a queue outside the French Consulate before I could get it
_visé_. Six days after the first telegram, I stood shivering on Victoria
Station at seven o'clock of a cadaverous January morning. Having been
well and truly searched in another little hut, and having kissed the
book, and sworn full-flavoured oaths about correspondence, and thought
of a number, and added four to it, I was allowed to board the train.
Half the British Army was on that train, and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome and
myself were the only civilians in our carriage. You will rightly guess
that it was a lively journey. I had always wondered, in peace-time, why
the jew's-harp was invented. I understand now. In the histories of this
war, the jew's-harp will take as romantic a place as the pipes of
Lucknow or the drums of Oude in the histories of other wars.
At Folkestone there were more searchings, more stamping of passports,
more papers and "permissions" to bulk one's pocket and perplex one's
mind. On the boat, standing-room only, and when a gestic stewardess
sought seats for a fond mother and five little ones in the ladies'
saloon, she found all places occupied by khaki figures stretched at full
length.
"_Seulement les dames!_" she cried, pointing to a notice over the door.
"_Aha, madame!_" said a stalwart Australian, "_mais c'est la guerre!_"
In other words "Aubrey Llewellyn Coventry Fell to you!"
Yes, it was war; and it was tactfully suggested to us by the crew, for,
when we were clear of Folkestone harbour, all boats were slung out, and
lifeboats were placed in tragic heaps on either side. It was a cold,
angry sea, and stewards and stewardesses became aggressively prophetic
about the fine crossing that we were to have. Germany had a few days
before declared her first blockade of the English coast, and every speck
on the sea became dreadfully portentous. At mid-Channel a destroyer
stood in to us and ran up a stream of signals.
"This is it," chortled a Cockney, between violent trips to the side;
"this is it! Now we're for it!"
Next moment I got a push in the back, and I thought it had come. But it
was the elbow of one of the crew who had rushed forward, and was sorting
bits of bunting from an impossibly tangled heap at my side. In about two
seconds, he found what he wanted and hauled at a rope. Up went what
looked like a patchwork counterpane, until the breeze caught it, when it
became a string of shapes and colours, straining deliriously against its
fastenings. Then down it came; then up again; then down; then up; then
down; and that was the end of that conversation. I don't know what it
signified, but half an hour later we were in Boulogne harbour.
More comic business with papers; then to the train. Yes, it was war. The
bridge over the Oise had not then been repaired; so we crawled to Paris
by an absurdly crab-like route. We left Boulogne just after twelve. We
reached Paris at ten o'clock at night. There was no food on the train,
and from six o'clock that morning, when I had had a swift cup of tea,
until nearly midnight I got nothing in the way of refreshment. But who
cared? I was going South to meet an American millionaire, and I had
money in my pocket.
I arrived at Paris too late to connect with that night's P.L.M. express,
so I had twenty-four hours to kill. I strolled idly about, and found
Paris very little changed. There was an air about the people of
irritation, of questioning, of petulant suffering; they had a manner
expressive of "_A quoi bon?_" Somebody in high quarters had brought
this thing upon them. Somebody in high quarters might rescue them from
its evils--or might not. They moved like stricken animals, their
habitual melancholy, which is often unnoticed because it is overlaid
with vivacity, now permanently in possession.
I caught the night express to Monte Carlo. Our carriage contained eight
sombre people, and the corridors were strewn with sleep-stupid soldiers.
I was one sardine among many, and, with a twenty-seven-hour journey
before me in this overheated, hermetically sealed sardine-tin, I began
to think what a fool I had been to make this absurd journey to a place
that was strange to me; to meet a millionaire about whom I knew nothing,
and who might have changed his mind, millionaire-fashion, and left Monte
Carlo by the time I got there; and to undertake a job which I might
find, on examination, was beyond me.
Then, with a French girl's head on one shoulder, and my other twisted at
an impossible angle into the window-frame, I went to sleep and awoke at
Lyons, with a horrible headache and an unbearable mouth, the result of
the boiling and over-spiced soup I had swallowed the night before. I
think we all hated each other. It was impossible to wash or arrange
oneself decently, and again there was no food on the train. But, as only
the Latin mind can, we made the best of it and pretended that it was
funny. Girls and men, complete strangers, drooped in abandonment against
one another, or reclined on unknown necks. A young married couple
behaved in a way that at other times would have meant a divorce. The
husband rested his sagging head on the bosom of a stout matron, and a
poilu stretched a rug across his knees and made a comfortable pillow for
the little wife. _N'importe. C'était la guerre._
On the platform at Lyons were groups of French Red Cross girls with
wagons of coffee. This coffee was for the soldiers, but they handed it
round impartially to civilians and soldiers alike, and those who cared
could drop a few sous into the collecting basin. That coffee was the
sweetest draught I had ever swallowed.
At Marseilles it was bright morning, and I was lucky enough to get a
pannier, at a trifling cost of seven francs. These panniers are no meal
for a hungry man. They contain a bone of chicken, a scrap of ham, a
corner of Gruyère, a stick of bread (that surely was made by the firm
that put the sand in sandwich), a half-bottle of sour white wine, a
bottle of the eternal Vichy, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.
I had just finished it when we rolled into Toulon, and there I got my
first glimpse of the true, warm South. I suffered a curious sense of
"coming home." I had not known it, but all my childish dreams must have
had for their background this coloured South, for, the moment it spread
itself before me, bits of Verdi melodies ran through my heart and brain
and I danced a double-shuffle. Since I was old enough to handle a
fiddle, all music has interpreted itself to me in a visualization of
blue seas, white coasts, green palms with lemon and nectarine dancing
through them, and noisy, sun-bright towns, and swart faces and
languorous and joyfully dirty people. The keenest sense of being at home
came later, when, at Monte Carlo, I met Giacomo Puccini, the hero of my
young days, whose music had illumined so many dark moments of my City
slavery; who is in the direct line of succession from Verdi.
This first visit to Monte Carlo showed me Monte Carlo as she never was
before. Half the hotels were closed or turned into hospitals, since all
the German hotel-staffs had been packed home. In other times it would
have been "the season," but now there was everywhere a sense of
emptiness. Wounded British and French officers paraded the Terrace;
disabled blacks from Algeria were on every hotel verandah or wandering
aimlessly about the hilly streets with a sad air of being lost. The
Casino was open, but it closed at eleven, and all the cafés closed with
it; the former happy night-life had been nipped off short. At midnight
the place was dead.
I was accommodated at an Italian _pension_ in Beausoleil, which, in
peace-times, was patronized by music-hall artists working the Beausoleil
casino. The Casino had been turned into a barracks, but one or two
Italian danseuses from the cabarets of San Remo were taking a brief
rest, so that the days were less tiresome than they might have been. My
millionaire was a charming man, who used my services but a few hours
each day. Then I could dally with the sunshine and the Chianti and the
breaking seas about the Condamine.
When I next want a cheap holiday I shan't go to Brighton, or Eastbourne,
or Cromer; I shall go to Monte Carlo. The dear Italian Mama who kept the
_pension_ treated me like a prince for thirty-five francs a week. I had
a large bedroom, with four windows looking to the Alpes Maritimes, and a
huge, downy French bed; I had coffee and roll in the morning; a
four-course lunch of Italian dishes, with a bottle of Chianti or Barolo;
and a five-course dinner, again with a bottle. Those meals were the most
delightful I have ever taken. The windows of the dining-room were flung
wide to the Mediterranean, and between courses we could bask on the
verandah while one of the girls would touch the guitar, the mandolin, or
the accordion (sometimes we had all three going at once), in
effervescent Neapolitan melody. My contribution to these meal-time
entertainments was an English song of which they never tired: "The Man
that Broke the Bank at Monte Carr-rr-lo!" Sometimes it was demanded five
or six times in an evening. Immediately I arrived I was properly
embraced and kissed by Mama and the three girls, and these rapturous
kisses seemed to be part of the etiquette of the establishment, for they
happened every morning and after all meals. M'selle Lola was allotted to
me; a blonde Italian, afire with mischief and loving-kindness and little
delicacies of affection.
On the third day of my visit I met a kindred soul, the wireless
operator from the Prince of Monaco's yacht, _L'Hirondelle_, which was
lying in the harbour on loan to the French Government. He was a bright
youth; had been many times on long cruises with the yacht, and spoke
English which was as good as my French was bad. We had some delightful
"noces" together, and it was in his company that I met and had talks
with Caruso at the Café de Paris. An opera season was running at the
Casino, and on opera nights the café remained open until a little past
midnight. After the evening's work Caruso would drop into the café and
talk with everybody. His naïve gratification when I told him how I had
saved money for weeks, and had waited hours at the gallery door of
Covent Garden to hear him sing, was delightful to witness. Prince George
of Serbia was also there, recuperating; but though the Terrace at
mid-day was crowded and pleasantly bright, I was told that against the
Terrace in the old seasons it was miserably dull.
On ordinary nights, when we felt still fresh at eleven o'clock, we would
take a car to Mentone, cross the frontier into Italy (which was not then
at war), and spend a few cheery hours at Bordighera or San Remo, which
were nightless. Then back to Monte Carlo at about five, to bed, and up
again at nine, with no feeling of fatigue. It was curious to note how,
under that sharp sunshine and keen night sky, all moral values were
changed, or wholly obliterated. The first breath of the youthful company
at the _pension_ blew all London cobwebs away. It was all so abandoned,
yet so sweet and wholesome; and, by contrast, the English seaside
resort, where the girls play at "letting themselves go," was a crude and
shameful farce. Whatever happened at Monaco seemed to be right; nothing
was wrong except frigidity and unkindness.
My dear Italian Mama said to me one evening at dinner, when I had (in
the English sense) disgraced myself by a remark straight from the
heart:--
"_M'sieu Thomas, on m'a dit que les anglais ont froid. C'est pas vrai!_"
No, dear Mamina; but it was true before I stayed at the Pension Poggio
at Beausoleil.
My work with the millionaire spread itself over two months; then, with a
fat wad, I was free to return. It was not until I went to the Consulate
to get my passport _visé_ that I discovered how many war-time laws of
France I had broken. I had not registered myself on arrival; I had not
reported myself periodically; and I had not obtained a _permis de
séjour_. The Consul informed me cheerfully that heaps of trouble would
be waiting for me when I went to the Mairie to get my _laissez-passer_,
without which I could not buy a railway ticket. However, after being
stood in a corner for two hours until all other travellers had received
attention, a _laissez-passer_ was thrown at me on my undertaking to
leave Monte Carlo that night. A gendarme accompanied me to the station
to see that I did so.
At Paris, a few hours spent with the police, the military,
Hôtel-de-Ville, and the British Consulate resulted in permission to kick
my heels there for a day or so.
A few mornings later arrived the millionaire's precious MS., which I had
left behind so that he might revise it, with a message to hustle. I
hustled. I reached London the same night. Next morning I negotiated with
a publisher. In two days it was in the printer's hands and in a
fortnight it was in the bookshops; and I was again out of a job.
IN SEARCH OF A SHOW
I have been looking for a needle in a haystack, and I have not found it.
I have been looking for an hour's true entertainment in London's
theatres and music-halls during this spring season of 1918.
The tag of Mr. Gus Elen's old song, "'E dunno where 'e are," very aptly
describes the condition of the regular theatre-goer to-day. What would
the old laddies of the Bodega-cheese days have thought, had any
prophesied that at one swift step the Oxford and the Pavilion would
simultaneously move into the ranks of the "legitimate;" that His
Majesty's Theatre would be running a pantomime; that smoking would be
allowed in the Lyceum, the Comedy, the Vaudeville, and the Garrick? Many
people have lost their individuality by being merged into one or other
war-movement since 1914; many streets have entirely lost those
distinctive features which enable us to recognize them at one glance or
by sound or smell; but nowhere has the war more completely smashed
personality than in theatre-land.