ante-1914), the visitor to London knew precisely the type of
entertainment and the type of audience he would find at any given
establishment. To-day, one figures his bewilderment--verily, 'e dunno
where 'e are. Formerly, he could be sure that at the Garrick he would
find Mr. Bourchier playing a Bourchieresque part. At His Majesty's he
would find just what he wanted--or would want what he found--for going
to His Majesty's was not a matter of dropping in: it was a pious
function. At the Alhambra or the Empire he would be sure of finding
excellent ballet at about ten o'clock, when he could sip his drink,
stroll round the promenade, and leave when he felt like it. At the time
I write he finds Mr. Bourchier playing low comedy at a transformed
music-hall, and at the Alhambra or the Empire he finds a suburban crowd,
neatly seated in rows--father, mother and flappers--watching a quite
innocuous entertainment.
Managers were long wont to classify in their minds the "Garrick"
audience, the "Daly" audience, the "Adelphi" audience, the "Haymarket"
audience; and plays would be refused by a manager on the ground that
"our audience wouldn't stand it; try the Lyric." To-day they are all in
the melting-pot, and the poor habitué of the So-and-so Theatre has to
take what is given him, and be mighty thankful for it.
At one time I loved a show, however cheap its kind; but in these days,
after visiting a war-time show and suffering the feeling of assisting at
some forbidden rite, I always wish I had wasted the evening in some
other manner. Since 1914 the theatres have not produced one show that
any sober man would pay two pence to see. The stuff that has been
produced has paid its way because the bulk of the public is drunk--with
war or overwork. The story of the stage since 1914 may be given in one
word--"Punk." Knowing that we are all too preoccupied with solemn
affairs to examine very closely our money's-worth, and knowing that the
boys on leave are not likely to be too hypercritical, the theatrical
money-lords--with one noble exception--have taken advantage of the
situation to fub us off with any old store-room rubbish. We have dozens
of genuine music-hall comedians on the stage to-day, but they are all
slacking. Some of them get absorbed by West End shows, and at once, when
they appear on the gigantic American stages of some of our modern
theatres, surrounded by crowds of elephantine women, they lose whatever
character and spontaneity they had. Others give the bulk of their time
and brains to earning cheap notoriety by raising funds for charities or
cultivating allotments--both commendable activities, but not compatible
with the serious business of cheering the public. Gradually, the
individual is being frozen out, and the stages are loaded with crowds of
horsey, child-aping women, called by courtesy a beauty chorus; the show
being called, also by courtesy, a revue. These shows resemble a revue as
much as the short stories of popular magazines resemble a _conte_. They
dazzle the eye and blast the ear, and, instead of entertaining, exhaust.
The artists have, allowing for human nature, done their best under
trying circumstances; but playing to an audience of overseas khaki and
tired working-people, who applaud their most maladroit japes, has had
the effect of wearing them down. They no longer work. They take the
easiest way, knowing that any remark about the Kaiser, Old Bill,
meat-cards, or the Better 'Ole is sure of a laugh.
One solitary example of money's-worth in war-time I found--but that is
outside the lists of vaudeville or drama. I mean Sir Thomas Beecham's
operative enterprise. Beginning, in 1915, to develop his previous
tentative experiments--fighting against indifference, prejudice, often
against active opposition--he went steadily on; and it is he whom our
men must thank if, on returning, they find in England something besides
factories and barracks. There is no man who, amid this welter of blood
and hate, has performed work of higher national importance. While every
effort was made to stifle or stultify every movement that made towards
sanity and vision, he went doggedly forward, striving to save from the
wreckage some trifle of sweetness and loveliness for those who have ears
to hear. Had certain good people had their way, he, his ideals, his
singers, his orchestra and his band instruments would have been flung
into the general cesspool, to lie there and rot. But he won through; and
I think only that enemy of civilization, the screaming, flag-wagging
patriot, will disagree with a famous Major-General who, in full
war-paint, stood at my side in the theatre bar between the acts of
_Tristan_, and, turning upon a querulous civilian who had snorted
against Wagner, cried angrily:--
"Nonsense, sir, nonsense. War is war. And music is music."
After years of struggling, Beecham has made it possible for an English
singer to sing to English audiences under his English name, and has
proved what theatrical and music-hall managers never attempt to prove:
that England can produce her own native talent in music and drama,
without taking the fourth-rate and fifth-rate, as well as the
first-rate, material of America and the Continent. He has shown himself
at once a philanthropist and a patriot. In none of his productions do we
find signs of that cheap philosophy that "anything will do for
war-time." Before the arrival of his company, opera in London was a mere
social function which (except from the point of view of the galleryite)
had little to do with music. People went to Covent Garden not to listen
to music, but to be seen; just as they went to the Savoy or to the
Carlton to be seen, not to procure nourishment. The Beecham opera is
first and last a matter of music.
So, Sir Thomas, a few thousand of us take off our hats to you. I think
we should all like to send you every morning a little bunch of violets,
or something equally valueless, but symbolic of the fine things you have
given us, of the silver lining you have disclosed to us in these
overclouded days.
VODKA AND VAGABONDS
Last year London lost two of its quaintest characters--Robertson, of
Australia, that pathetic old man who haunted the Strand and carried in
his hat a clumsily scrawled card announcing that he was searching for
his errant daughter, and "Please Do Not Give Me Money"; and "Spring
Onions," the Thames Police Court poet.
Now the race of London freaks seems ended. Craig, the poet of the Oval
Cricket ground; Spiv Bagster; the Chiswick miser; Onions and Robertson;
all are gone. Hunnable is confined; and G. N. Curzon isn't looking any
too well. Even that prolific poet, Rowbotham, self-styled "the modern
Homer," has been keeping quiet lately. It took a universal war, though,
to make him nod.
I met "Spring" (privately, Mr. W. G. Waters) once or twice at Stepney.
He was a vagrant minstrel of the long line of Villon and Cyrano de
Bergerac. His anniversary odes were known to thousands of newspaper
readers. He was the self-appointed Laureate of the nation. He
celebrated not only himself, his struggles and successes, but the
pettier happenings of the day, such as the death of a king, the
accession of a king, or the marriage of some royal couple. You remember
his lines on the Coronation of Edward VII:--
The King, His Majesty, and may him Heaven bless,
He don't put no side on in his dress.
For, though he owns castles and palaces and houses,
He wears, just like you and me, coats and waistcoats and trousis.
The character of the genial Edward in four lines. Could it have been
better said?
Not to know Spring argues yourself unknown. He might have stepped from
the covers of Dekker's _Gull's Hornbook_. He was a child of nature. I
can't bring myself to believe that he was born of woman. I believe the
fairies must have left him under the gooseberry--no, under the laurel
bush, for he wore the laurel, the myrtle, and the bay as one born to
them. He also, on occasion, wore the vine-leaf; and surely that is now
an honour as high as the laurel, since all good fellowship and
kindliness and conviviality have been sponged from our social life. We
have been made dull and hang-dog by law. I wonder what Spring would have
said about that law in his unregenerate days--Spring, who was "in"
thirty-nine times for "D. and D." He would have written a poem about it,
I know: a poem that would have rung through the land, and have brought
to camp the numerous army of Boltists, Thresholdists, and Snortists.
Oh, Spring has been one of the boys in his time, believe me. But in his
latter years he was dull and virtuous; he kept the pledge of teetotalism
for sixteen years, teetotalism meaning abstention from alcoholic
liquors. This doesn't mean that he wasn't like all other teetotalers,
sometimes drunk. The pious sages who make our by-laws seem to forget
that it is as easy to get drunk on tea and coffee as on beer; the only
difference being that beer makes you pleasantly drunk, and tea and
coffee make you miserably drunk.
If you knew Spring in the old days, you wouldn't have known him towards
the end--and I don't suppose he would have known you. For in his old age
he was a Person. He was odd messenger at Thames Police Court. In
November, 1898 Spring, who was then the local reprobate, took to heart
the kindly admonitions of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at Thames,
and signed the pledge of total abstinence. Ever afterwards, on the
anniversary of that great day. Spring would hand to the magistrate a
poem in celebration of the fact that he had "kept off it" for another
year.
I visited Spring just before his death in his lodging--lodging stranger
than that of any Montmartre poet.
The Thames Police Court is in Arbour Square, Stepney, and Spring lived
near his work. Through many mean streets I tracked his dwelling, and at
last I found it. I climbed flights of broken stairs in a high forbidding
house. I stumbled over steps and unexpected turns, and at last I stood
with a puffy, red-faced, grey-whiskers, stocky old fellow, in a
candle-lit garret whose one window looked over a furtively noisy court.
It was probably his family name of Waters that drove him to drink in his
youth, since when, he has been known as the man who put the tea in
"teetotal." In his room I noticed a bed of nondescript colour and
make-up, a rickety chest of drawers (in which he kept his treasures),
two doubtful chairs, a table, a basin, and bits of food strewn
impartially everywhere. A thick, limp smell hung over all, and the place
seemed set a-jigging by the flickering light of the candle. There I
heard his tale. He sat on the safe chair while I flirted with the other.
It was on the fortieth occasion that he yielded to Sir John Dickinson's
remonstrances and signed the pledge, and earned the respect of all
connected with that court where he had made so many appearances. All
through that Christmas and New Year he had, of course, a thin time; it
was suffocating to have to refuse the invitation: "Come on,
Spring--let's drink your health!" But what did Spring do? Did he yield?
Never. When he found he was thirsty, he sat down and wrote a poem, and
by the time he had found a rhyme for Burton, the thirst had passed.
Then, too, everybody took an interest in him and gave him work and
clothes, and so on. Oh, yes, it's a profitable job being a reformed
vagabond in Stepney.
He was employed on odd messages and errands for the staff at Thames
Police Court, and visited the police-stations round about to do similar
errands, such as buying breakfast for the unfortunates who have been
locked up all night and are about to face the magistrate. Whatever an
overnight prisoner wants in the way of food he may have (intoxicants
barred), if he cares to pay for it, and Spring was the agile fellow who
fetched it for him; and many stray coppers (money, not policemen) came
his way.
All these things he told me as I sat in his mephitic lodging. Spring,
like his brother Villon, was a man of all trades; no job was too "odd"
for him to take on. Holding horses, taking messages from court to
station, writing odes on this and that, opening and shutting doors, and
dashing about in his eightieth year just like a newsboy--Spring was
certainly a credit to Stepney. On my mentioning that I myself made songs
at times, he dashed off the following impromptu, as I was falling down
his crazy stairs at midnight:--
Oh, how happy we all should be,
If none of us ever drank anything stronger than tea.
For how can a man hope to write a beautiful song
When he is hanging round the public-houses all day long?
"Spring Onions" apart, Stepney is a home for all manner of queer
characters, full of fire and salt; from Peter the Painter, of immortal
memory, to those odd-job men who live well by being Jacks of all trades,
and masters of them, too.
There are my good friends, Johnny, the scavenger, Mr. 'Opkinson, the
cat's-meat man, 'Erb, the boney, Fat Fred, who keeps the baked-potato
can, and that lovable personality "My Uncle Toby," gate-man at one of
the docks.
There's 'Orace, too, the minder. Ever met him? Ever employed him?
Probably not, but if you live near any poor market-place, and ever have
occasion for his services, I cordially recommend him.
'Orace is the best minder east of the Pump. What does he mind? Your
business, not his. Haven't you ever seen him at it in the more homely
quarters? At a penny a time, it's good hunting; and 'Orace is the only
man I know who blesses certain recent legislation.
His profession sprang from the Children Act, which debarred parents from
taking children into public-houses. Now, there are thousands of
respectable couples who like to have a quiet--or even a noisy--drink on
market-night; and the effect of the Act was that they had to go in
singly, one taking a drink while the other stood outside and held the
baby.
There was 'Orace's opportunity, and he took it. Why not let father and
mother take their drink together, while 'Orace sang lullabies to his
Majesty?
Admirable idea. It caught on, for 'Orace has a way with babies. He can
talk baby guff by the hour, and in the whole of his professional career
he has never had to mind a baby that did not "take" to him on sight.
The fee is frequently more than a penny. If the old dad wants to stay
for a bit, he will stand 'Orace a drink (under the rose) and a pipe of
'baccy. Sundays and holidays are his best days. He selects his
public-house, on the main road always, and works it all day. Often he
has five or six kiddies at a time to protect; and he gave me a private
tip towards success as a "minder": always carry a number of bright
things in your pockets--nails, pearl buttons, bits of coloured chalk,
or, best of all, a piece of putty.
Outside his regular pitch, the public-house owns a horse-trough, but as
no horses now draw up, the trough is dry, and in this he places his
half-dozen or so protégés, out of danger and as happy as you please.
Then there's Artie, the copper's nark. What shall be said of Artie?
Shall I compare him to a summer's day? No, I think not; rather to a
cobwebbed Stepney twilight. I don't commend Artie. Indeed, I have as
little regard for him as I have for those poisonous weeds that float on
the Thames near Greenwich at flood. He is a thoroughly disagreeable
person, with none of the acid qualities of the really bad man or the
firelight glow of commonplace sinners like ourselves. He is incapable of
following any other calling. He has been, from boyhood, mixed up with
criminal gangs, but he has not the backbone necessary for following them
on their enterprises. Always he has wanted to feel safe; so he cringes
at the feet of officialism. He is hated by all--by the boys whose games
he springs and by the unscrupulous police who employ him. His rewards
are small: a few pence now and then, an occasional drink, and a tolerant
eye towards his own little misbehavings.
Often the police are puzzled as to how Artie gets his information. If
you were to ask him, he would become Orientally impassive.
"Ah, you'd like to know, wouldn't yer?"
But the truth is that he does not himself know. In a poor
district--Walworth, Hoxton, or Notting Dale--everybody talks; and it is
in these districts that Artie works. He is useless in big criminal
affairs; he can only gather and report information on the petty doings
of his associates. The moment any small burglary is planned, two or
three people know about it, for the small burglar is always maladroit
and ill-instructed in his methods, and is bound to confide in some one.
Artie is always about like a predatory bird to snatch up crumbs of other
people's business.
Are you married, and were you married at a Registry Office? If so, it's
certain that you've met my dear old friend. Stepney Syd, the
Congratulator, one of our most earnest war-workers; as "unwearied" as
Lady Dardy Dinkum.
Congratulations, spoken at the right moment, in the right way, to the
right people, are a paying proposition. The war has made no difference
in the value of those mellifluous syllables, unless it be in an upward
direction. It's a soft job, too. Syd never works after three in the
afternoon. He cannot, because his work is the concluding touch to the
marriage service. It consists in hanging about registry-offices--that in
Covent Garden is very popular with young people in a hurry--and waiting
until a cab arrives with prospective bride and bridegroom. When they
leave, Syd is there to open the door for them, and respectfully offer
felicitations; and so fatuous and helpless is man when he has taken a
woman for life that he dare not ignore this happy omen.
Thus, Syd comes home every time on a good thing, and, by careful
watching of the weekly papers in the Free Library, and putting two and
two together, he contrives, like some of our politicians, to anticipate
events, and to be where the good things are.
Strolling round Montagu Street the other night, I met, in one of the
little Russian cafés, a man who pitched me a tale of woe--a lean,
ferrety little man, with ferrety eyes and fingers that urged me to
button my overcoat and secure all pockets.
But I was shocked to discover that he was an honest man. Diamonds and
honesty seldom walk hand-in-hand, and precious stones and virtue do not
yet publicly kiss each other; and he talked so much of diamonds that my
first apprehensions were perhaps justified. I learnt, however, that his
was a sad case. He was a diamond-cutter by trade, and in those war days
one might as usefully have diamonds in Amsterdam (as Maudi Darrell's
song went) as have them in London.
I had not before met a man who so casually juggled with the symbols of
revue-girlhood, so I bought him some more vodka and tea-and-lemon, and
led him on to talk. Stones to the value of £20,000 passed through his
hands every day, but none of them stuck. This fact greatly refreshed my
dimming faith in human nature, until he qualified it by adding that it
wasn't worth a cutter's while to steal. Every worker in the trade is
known to every branch, and he would have no second chance.
Apprenticeship to the trade of diamond-cutting costs £200: and, once out
of his indentures, the apprentice must join the Union, for it would be
useless for him, however proficient in his business, to attempt to
obtain a post without his Union ticket.
The diamond-mechanic earns anything from £3 to £8 per week. The work
calls for a very considerable knowledge of the characters of stones, for
very deft fingers, and for exceptionally shrewd judgment; since every
diamond or brilliant, however minute, has sixty-four facets, each of
which has to be made and polished on a lathe.
The stones are handed out in the workshop practically haphazard, and in
the event of the loss of a stone, no disturbance is caused. The staff
simply look for it; the floor of the shop is swept up with a fine broom,
and the dust sifted until it is found. The explanation of this laxity
is the International Diamond Cutters' Union.
In the process of diamond-cutting, of course, the stone loses about 60
per cent. of its weight; and the cutter told me that the filings that
come from the stone, mixed with the oil of the lathe, make the finest
lubricant for a razor-strop. The making of his smooth cheeks was the
perfect razor sharpened with diamond filings!
Before we parted, he showed me casually a green diamond. This is the
most rare form of stone, and there are only six known examples in the
world. No, he didn't steal it. It had just been handed to him for
setting, and he was carrying it in his waistcoat-pocket in the careless
manner of all stone-dealers.
After he and a sure thousand pounds had vanished into the night, I sat
for awhile in the café listening to the chatter of the cigarette-girls
of the quarter.
It was all of war. Of Stefan, who had been repatriated; of Abramovitch,
who had evaded service by bolting to Ireland with a false green form for
which he had paid £100; of Sergius, who had been hiding in a cellar.
When one thinks of cigarette-girls one thinks at once of Marion
Crawford's _Cigarette-maker's Romance_ and of Martin Harvey's
super-sentimental performance in that play, so dear to the Streatham
flapper. But Sonia Karavitch, though soaked in the qualities of her
race--dark beauty, luxurious curls, brooding temper, and spiritual
melancholy--would, I fear, repel those who only know her under the
extravagantly refining rays of the limelight. But those who love
humanity in the raw will love her.
Sonia Karavitch is seventeen. She wears a black frock, with many sprigs
of red ribbon at her neck and in her raven hair. Her fingers are stained
brown with tobacco; but, though she has heavy eyes and lounges
languorously, like a drowsy cat in the sunshine, she works harder than
most other factory-girls.
From six o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night she is at
her table, rolling by the thousand those hand-made cigarettes which
command big prices in Piccadilly. When she speaks she has a lazy voice
with a curious lisp, and it is full of sadness.
Yet she is not sad. She has a pleasant little home in one of the big
tenements, where she lives with her mother and little brother, and, in
her own demonstrative way, is happy. The harder she works, the more
money there is for luxuries for the little brother. Often of an evening
her friends come home with her, and drink tea-and-lemon with her, and
make music.
Sonia Karavitch is very shy, and never mixes with the folk who are not
of her own colony. She was born in Stepney of Russian parents, and she
never goes out of Stepney. And why should she? For in the half-dozen
streets where she lives her daily life she can speak the language of her
parents, can buy clothes such as her mother wore in Odessa, and can find
all those little touches that mean home to the homeless or the exiled.
Every morning she goes straight to the factory; at noon she goes home to
dinner; and in the evening she goes straight home again. Sometimes on
Saturday afternoons--which is her Sunday, for Sonia is of Jewish
faith--she takes a walk in Whitechapel High Street, because, you see,
there is much life in Whitechapel High Street; there are her
compatriots, and there are street-organs, and violets are a penny a
bunch.
When she has had a good week she sometimes takes her mother and brother
for kvass to one of the many Russian restaurants in Osborn Street and
Little Montagu Street.
Sometimes you see Sonia Karavitch at a table, sipping her tea, and
listening to the talk, and you may wonder why that sad, far-away look in
her eyes. She is not in Stepney. Her soul has flown to her native
land--to the steppes, to the cold airs of Russia, whither a certain
Russian lad, who used to work by her side in the cigarette factory in
Osborn Street, was dispatched by a repatriation order.
But then she remembers mother and little brother, and stops her
dreamings, and hurries on to work.
Many wild folk have sat in these cafés and discoursed on the injustices
of civilization; and at one time private presses in the neighbourhood
gave forth inflammatory sheets bearing messages from international
warriors in the cause of freedom.
If ever you are tired of the solemn round of existence, don't take a
holiday at the seaside, don't go to the war. Edit an anarchist
news-sheet, and your life will be full of quick perils and alarms.
Another of my Stepney friends is Jane, the flower-girl, who tramps every
day from Stepney to Covent Garden, and sells her stock from a pitch
near Leicester Square. Here's another ardent war-worker.