they imply, into the education of England. It is satisfied--the world's
response to Germany's insolent challenge is the proof of it--that its
pains have been well bestowed. England is more nearly fit than any other
nation to wield the power that is hers. That is not to deny the peculiar
virtues of other nations; indeed, these virtues have largely contributed
to the result. Italy has educated her; France has educated her; we have
done something; and Germany. In result, she is not perfect--the English
would perhaps least of all assert that--but she has learned a great deal
and held herself steady while she learned it. It is a bigger job than
the world cares to undertake to teach any other nation so much. Nor
would it be at all likely to succeed so well. For what England has to
offer the world in return is not simply her institutions; it is not
merely a formula for the effective discharge of police duty throughout
the world; it is the English freeman, whether he hail from Canada,
Australia, Africa, or the uttermost isles of the sea.
A most adaptable fellow, this freeman, doing all sorts of work
everywhere, and with tremendous powers of assimilation. Consider him in
his origins. He began by assimilating fully his own weight in Danes,
while remaining an English freeman. He then perforce accepted a Norman
king, as he had accepted a Danish one, hoping, as always, that the king
would not trouble him too much. But when Norman William, who was very
ill-informed about the breed, killed off most of his natural leaders and
harried the rest into villeiny, how did he manage in a small matter of
two hundred years or so to make an English gentleman not only of himself
but of all the rag-tag of adventurers who had come over with William and
since? How did he contrive, out of a band of exiles fleeing from an
Egypt of ecclesiastical tyranny, broken younger sons, artisans out of a
job, speculators, bondmen, Swedes, Dutchmen, and what not, to make
America? Is he one likely to lose his bearings when in his America the
age-old problem again heaves in view? This is a job he has been working
at pretty successfully for more than a thousand years. Grant him a
moment to realize himself afresh in the face of it. Don't expect him to
stop and give a coherent explanation of what he is doing. He wouldn't
be the true son of the English tradition that he is if he could do that.
Perhaps the occupants of the new chair can do something of the sort for
him.
THE RUSSIAN QUARTER
_By_ THOMAS BURKE
Thomas Burke, a young newspaper man in London, came into quick
recognition with his first book, _Nights in Town_ (published in
America as _Nights in London_) in 1915. His first really popular
success, however, was _Limehouse Nights_, less satisfactory to
those who had read the first book, as it was largely a repetition
of the same material in fiction form. (In fact, Mr. Burke holds
what must be almost a record among authors by having worked over
nearly the identical substance in four different versions--as
essays and sketches, in _Nights in Town_; as short stories, in
_Limehouse Nights_; as a novel, in _Twinkletoes_; as poetry, in
_The Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse_.)
Mr. Burke has specialized on London, and with great ability. In the
Limehouse series his colorings seem just a little too consciously
vivid, his roguishness a little too studied, to be quite
satisfying. _The Outer Circle_, a volume of rambles in the London
suburbs, is to me more truly a work of art.
I had known the quarter for many years before it interested me. It was
not until I was prowling around on a Fleet Street assignment that I
learned to hate it. A murder had been committed over a café in Lupin
Street; a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and with a sex
interest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous
anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that
end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public
spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I
was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and
the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for
the London Letter, do something good on the Vassiloff murder.
It was a night of cold rain, and the pavements were dashed with smears
of light from the shop windows. Through the streaming streets my hansom
leaped; and as I looked from the window, and noted the despondent
biliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that the grass withereth, the
flower fadeth.
I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, continuing the tradition which
had been instilled into me by my predecessor on the London Letter, I
turned into one of the hostelries and had a vodka to keep the cold out.
Little Russia was shutting up. The old shawled women, who sit at every
corner with huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, were departing
beneath umbrellas. The stalls of Osborn Street, usually dressed with
foreign-looking confectionery, were also retiring. Indeed, everybody
seemed to be slinking away, and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burn
me with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all publics which desired to
read about murders. I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the least
good; so I had another, and gazed through the kaleidoscopic window,
rushing with rain, at the cheerful world that held me.
Oh, so sad it is, this quarter! By day the streets are a depression,
with their frowzy doss-houses and their vapor-baths. Gray and sickly is
the light. Gray and sickly, too, are the leering shops, and gray and
sickly are the people and the children. Everything has followed the
grass and the flowers. Childhood has no place; so above the roofs you
may see the surly points of a Council School. Such games as happen are
played but listlessly, and each little face is smirched. The gaunt
warehouses hardly support their lopping heads, and the low, beetling,
gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to brood on nights of bitter
adventure. Fit objects for contempt by day they may be, but when night
creeps upon London, the hideous darkness that can almost be touched,
then their faces become very powers of terror, and the cautious soul,
wandered from the comfort of the main streets, walks and walks in a
frenzy, seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes a hoarse laugh will
break sharp on his ear. Then he runs.
Well, I finished my second, and then sauntered out. As I was passing a
cruel-looking passage, a girl stepped forward. She looked at me. I
looked at her. She had the haunting melancholy of Russia in her face,
but her voice was as the voice of Cockaigne. For she spoke and said:--
"Funny-looking little guy, ain't you?"
I suppose I was. So I smiled and said: "We are as God made us, old
girl."
She giggled....
I said I felt sure I should do no good on the Vassiloff murder. I
didn't. For just then two of her friends came out of the court, each
with a boy. It was apparent that she had no boy. I had no idea what the
occasion might be, but the other four marched ahead, crying, "Come on!"
And, surprised, yet knowing of no good reason for being surprised, I
felt the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined the main column....
That is one of London's greatest charms: it is always ready to toss you
little encounters of this sort, if you are out for them.
Across the road we went, through mire and puddle, and down a long,
winding court. At about midway our friends disappeared, and, suddenly
drawn to the right, I was pushed from behind up a steep, fusty stair.
Then I knew where we were going. We were going to the tenements where
most of the Russians meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these places
is a little more cheerful than that of the cafés--if you can imagine a
Russian ever rising to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over the
milliners' shops, and thither their friends resort. Every establishment
here has a piano, for music, with them, is a somber passion rather than
a diversion. You will not hear comic opera, but if you want to climb the
lost heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and listen to a piano, lost
in the high glooms, wailing the heart of Chopin, or Rubinstein or
Glazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist girls, while the ghost of
Peter the Painter parades the naphtha'd highways.
At the top of the stair I was pushed into a dark, fusty room, and guided
to a low, fusty sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, and a lamp
was lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radiance
on its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls and
boys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently very
much at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on the
bed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in Cockney toughs. I
doubt if you would have loved the girls at that moment; and yet ... you
know ... their black or brassy hair, their untidiness, and the cotton
blouses half-dropped from their tumultuous breasts....
The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then brought
a tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watching
the others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon the
ladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes. I did
so for Katarina--that was her name--while she watched me with little
truant locks of hair running everywhere, and a slow, alluring smile
that seemed to hold all the agony and mystery of the steppes.
The room, on which the wallpaper hung in dank strips, contained a
full-sized bed and a chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, a potpourri
of a carpet, and certain mysteries of feminine toilet. A rickety
three-legged table stood by the window, and Katarina's robes hung in a
dainty riot of frill and color behind the door, which only shut when you
thrust a peg of wood through a wired catch.
One of the boys sprawled himself, in clumsy luxury, on the bed, and his
girl arranged herself at his side, and when she was settled her hair
tumbled in a shower of hairpins, and everybody laughed like children.
The other girl went to the piano, and her boy squatted on the floor at
her feet.
She began to play.... You would not understand, I suppose, the
intellectual emotion of the situation. It is more than curious to sit in
these rooms, in the filthiest spot in London, and listen to Moszkowsky,
Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. It is ... something
indefinable. I had visited similar places in Stepney before, but then I
had not had a couple of vodkas, and I had not been taken in tow by an
unknown girl. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and
sometimes vodka or whisky, go round; and as the room gets warmer, so
does one's sense of smell get sharper; so do the pale faces get
moister; and so does one long more and more for a breath of cold air
from the Ural Mountains. The best you can do is to ascend to the flat
roof, and take a deep breath of Spitalfields ozone. Then back to the
room for more tea and more music.
Sanya played.... Despite the unventilated room, the greasy appointments,
and other details that would have turned the stomach of Kensington, that
girl at the piano, her dress cunningly disarranged, playing, as no one
would have dreamed she could play, the finer intensities of Wieniawski
and Moussorgsky, shook all sense of responsibility from me. The burdens
of life vanished. News editors and their assignments be damned. Enjoy
yourself, was what the cold, insidious music said. Take your moments
when the fates send them; that was life's best lesson. Snatch the joy of
the fleeting moment. Why ponder on time and tears?
Devilish little fingers they were, Sanya's. Her technique was not
perhaps all that it might have been; she might not have won the Gold
Medal of our white-shirted academies, but she had enough temperament to
make half a dozen Bechstein Hall virtuosi. From valse to nocturne, from
sonata to prelude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords she dropped from
"L'Automne Bacchanale" to the Nocturne in E flat; scarcely murmured of
that, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's Waltz, and from that she
dropped to a song of Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its childish
beauty, and then to the lecherous music of the second act of "Tristan."
Mazurka, polonaise, and nocturne wailed in the stuffy chamber; her
little hands lit up the enchanted gloom of the place with bright
thrills, until the bed and the dingy surroundings faded into phantoms
and left only two stark souls in colloquy: Katarina's and mine.
Katarina had settled, I forget how, on the sofa, and was reclining very
comfortably with her head on my shoulder and both arms about me. We did
not talk. No questions passed as to why we had picked one another up.
There we were, warmed with vodka and tea, at eleven o'clock at night,
five stories above the clamorous world, while her friend shook the silly
souls out of us. With the shy boldness of my native country, I stretched
a hand and inclosed her fingers. She smiled; a curious smile that no
other girl in London could have given; not a flushed smile, or a
startled smile, or a satisfied smile, or a coy smile; but a smile of
companionship, which seemed to have realized the tragedy of our living.
So it was that she had, by slow stages, reached her comfortable
position, for as my hand wandered from finger to wrist, from wrist to
soft, rounded arm, and so inclosed her neck, she slipped and buried me
in an avalanche of flaming, scented tresses.
Sanya at the piano shot a glance over her shoulder, a very sad-gay
glance; she laughed, curiously, I almost said foreignly. I felt somehow
as though I had been taken complete possession of by these people. I
hardly belonged to myself. Fleet Street was but a street of dream. I
seemed now to be awake and in an adorable captivity.
With a final volley of chords, the pianist slid from the chair, and sat
by her boy on the carpet, smoothing his face with tobacco-stained
fingers, and languishing, while her thick, over-ripe lips took his
kisses as a baby bird takes food from its mother.
We talked--all of us--in jerks and snatches. Then the oil in the lamp
began to give out, and the room grew dim. Some one said: "Play
something!" And some one said: "Too tired!" The girl reclining on the
bed grew snappy. She did not lean for caresses. She seemed morose,
preoccupied, almost impatient. Twice she snapped up her boy on a casual
remark. I believe I talked vodka'd nonsense....
But suddenly there came a whisper of soft feet on the landing, and a
secret tap at the door. Some one opened it, and slipped out. One heard
the lazy hum of voices in busy conversation. Then silence; and some one
entered the room and shut the door. One of the boys asked, casually,
"What's up?" His question was not answered, but the girl who had gone to
the door snapped something in a sharp tone which might have been either
Russian or Yiddish. Katarina loosened herself from me, and sat up. The
girl on the bed sat up. The three of them spat angry phrases about, I
called over to one of the boys: "What's the joke? Anything wrong?" and
received a reply: "Owshdiknow? I ain't a ruddy Russian, am I?"
Katarina suddenly drew back her flaming face. "Here," she said, "you
better go."
"Go?"
"Yes--fathead! Go's what I said."
"But--" I began, looking and feeling like a flabbergasted cat.
"Don't I speak plain? Go!"
I suppose a man never feels a finer idiot than when a woman tells him
she doesn't want him. If he ever does, it is when a woman tells him that
she loves him. Katarina had given me the bullet, and, of course, I felt
a fool; but I derived some consolation from the fact that the other boys
were being told off. Clearly, big things were in the air, about to
happen. Something, evidently, had already happened. I wondered.... Then
I sat down on the sofa, and flatly told Katarina that I was not going
unless I had a reason.
"Oh," she said, blithely, "ain't you? This is my room, ain't it? I
brought you here, and you stay here just as long as I choose, and no
longer. Who d'you think you are, saying you won't go? This is my room. I
let you come here for a drink, and you just got to go when I say. See?"
I was about to make a second stand, when again there came a stealthy tap
at the door, and the whispering of slippered feet. Sanya glided to the
door, opened it, and disappeared. In a moment she came back, and called,
"'Rina!" Katarina slipped from my embrace, went to the door, and
disappeared too. One girl and three boys remained--in silence.
Next moment Katarina reappeared, and said something to Sanya. Sanya
pulled her boy by the arm, and went out. The other girl pushed her boy
at the neck and literally threw him out. Katarina came over to me, and
said: "Go, little fool!"
I said: "Shan't unless I know what the game is."
She stood over me; glared; searched for words to meet the occasion;
found none. She gestured. I sat as rigid as an immobile comedian.
Finally, she flung her arms, and swept away. At the door she turned;
"Blasted little fool! He'll do us both in if y'ain't careful. You don't
know him. Both of us he'll have. Serveyeh right."
She disappeared. I was alone. I heard the _sup-sup_ of her slippered
feet down the stair.
I got up, and moved to the door. I heard nothing. I stood by the window,
my thoughts dancing a ragtime. I wondered what to do, and how, and
whether. I wondered what was up exactly. I wondered ... well, I just
wondered. My thoughts got into a tangle, sank, and swam, and sank again.
Then there was a sudden struggle and spurt from the lamp, and it went
black out. From a room across the landing a clock ticked menacingly. I
saw, by the thin light from the window, the smoke of a discarded
cigarette curling up and up to the ceiling like a snake.
I went again to the door, peered down the steep stair and over the crazy
balustrade. Nobody was about; no voices. I slipped swiftly down the five
flights, met nobody. I stood in the slobbered vestibule. From afar I
heard the sluck of the waters against the staples of the wharves, and
the wicked hoot of the tugs.
It was then that a sudden nameless fear seized me; it was that simple
terror that comes from nothing but ourselves. I am not usually afraid of
any man or thing. I am normally nervous, and there are three or four
things that have power to terrify me. But I am not, I think, afraid. At
that moment, however, I was afraid of everything: of the room I had
left, of the house, of the people, of the inviting lights of the
warehouses and the threatening shoals of the alleys.
I stood a moment longer. Then I raced into Brick Lane, and out into the
brilliance of Commercial Street.
A WORD FOR AUTUMN
_By_ A. A. MILNE
This is the sort of urbane pleasantry in which British essayists
are prolific and graceful. Alan Alexander Milne was born in 1882,
went to Trinity College, Cambridge; was editor of _The Granta_ (the
leading undergraduate publication at Cambridge at that time); and
plunged into the great whirlpool of London journalism. He was on
the staff of _Punch_, 1906-14. He has now collected several volumes
of charming essays, and has had considerable success as a
playwright: his comedy, _Mr. Pim Passes By_, recently played a
prosperous run in New York. "A Word for Autumn" is from his volume
_Not That It Matters_.
Last night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I knew that
summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may be--the
reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the misty
evenings--but none of these comes home to me so truly. There may be cool
mornings in July; in a year of drought the leaves may change before
their time; it is only with the first celery that summer is over.
I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was saying that
winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun to seem possible
lately that a miracle might happen, that summer might drift on and on
through the months--a final upheaval to crown a wonderful year. The
celery settled that. Last night with the celery autumn came into its
own.
There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October. It
is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat. It crackles
pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is excellent, I am told, for the
complexion. One is always hearing of things which are good for the
complexion, but there is no doubt that celery stands high on the list.
After the burns and freckles of summer one is in need of something. How
good that celery should be there at one's elbow.
A week ago--("A little more cheese, waiter")--a week ago I grieved for
the dying summer. I wondered how I could possibly bear the waiting--the
eight long months till May. In vain to comfort myself with the thought
that I could get through more work in the winter undistracted by
thoughts of cricket grounds and country houses. In vain, equally, to
tell myself that I could stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the
thought of after-breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold. But
now, suddenly, I am reconciled to autumn. I see quite clearly that all
good things must come to an end. The summer has been splendid, but it
has lasted long enough. This morning I welcomed the chill in the air;
this morning I viewed the falling leaves with cheerfulness; and this
morning I said to myself, "Why, of course, I'll have celery for lunch."
("More bread, waiter.")
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," said Keats, not actually
picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the
general blessings of the autumn. Yet what an opportunity he missed by
not concentrating on that precious root. Apples, grapes, nuts, and
vegetable marrows he mentions specially--and how poor a selection! For
apples and grapes are not typical of any month, so ubiquitous are they,
vegetable marrows are vegetables _pour rire_ and have no place in any
serious consideration of the seasons, while as for nuts, have we not a
national song which asserts distinctly, "Here we go gathering nuts in
May"? Season of mists and mellow celery, then let it be. A pat of butter
underneath the bough, a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread and--Thou.
How delicate are the tender shoots unfolded layer by layer. Of what a
whiteness is the last baby one of all, of what a sweetness his flavor.
It is well that this should be the last rite of the meal--_finis coronat
opus_--so that we may go straight on to the business of the pipe. Celery
demands a pipe rather than a cigar, and it can be eaten better in an inn
or a London tavern than in the home. Yes, and it should be eaten alone,
for it is the only food which one really wants to hear oneself eat.
Besides, in company one may have to consider the wants of others. Celery
is not a thing to share with any man. Alone in your country inn you may
call for the celery; but if you are wise you will see that no other
traveler wanders into the room. Take warning from one who has learnt a
lesson. One day I lunched alone at an inn, finishing with cheese and
celery. Another traveler came in and lunched too. We did not speak--I
was busy with my celery. From the other end of the table he reached
across for the cheese. That was all right! it was the public cheese. But
he also reached across for the celery--my private celery for which I
owed. Foolishly--you know how one does--I had left the sweetest and
crispest shoots till the last, tantalizing myself pleasantly with the
thought of them. Horror! to see them snatched from me by a stranger. He
realized later what he had done and apologized, but of what good is an
apology in such circumstances? Yet at least the tragedy was not without
its value. Now one remembers to lock the door.
Yes, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it
was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet,
dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other
things--crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires.
Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end
of the summer is not the end of the world. Here's to October--and,
waiter, some more celery.
"A CLERGYMAN"
_By_ MAX BEERBOHM