Yokohama—A Japanese Family—Pretty Sarawana—A Tea-house Festival—A Geisha
Orchestra—Sun Worship—Stowaways in the Stokehold—Reflections—The Kind
Skipper
I STAYED in Sydney for a few weeks and finally got on a Japanese ship,
the _Maru_, and eventually arrived at Yokohama. I had never been to
Japan before, and after tea I hurried ashore. On the wharf stood rows of
Japanese low-caste women, dressed like guys. They had black teeth, and
faces that looked as though they were carved out of yellow wood, and
voices that went “honk-ki-hong-ki-ko koo ko,” as though they had an
orange in their throats. Their toes turned inward and their eyes
outward, and Japanese flies built their hives in their thick, matted
hair. It was hot, muggy weather. I was very disappointed at first, but
when I got up into the city and found myself walking among crowds of
fascinating Japanese people, all jabbering and shuffling along in clogs,
I became interested. I had some dim expectation of seeing bamboo
dwellings and Oriental fairyland trees, with Japanese lanterns hanging
on them. Instead of which I saw fine buildings, well-lit streets and
beautiful parks with lakes in them, surrounded by maple and
cherry-trees. Boats were being paddled on the lake by Japanese girls
dressed in pale blue kimonos and with hibiscus and cherry blossom in
their hair. You can never forget that you are in Japan because of the
strange language that hums in your ears as you pass along, dreaming you
hear the sandalled, shuffling feet of some old ghostly Assyrian city and
the hubbub of the population talking across the silent ages.
Next day I went to Tokio; it was only a few miles away, about twenty, I
think. There I saw real old Japan, and went off into the Oriental dark
ages. I saw painted, red-lipped beauties with slit-shaped dark eyes and
faces like dolls, being carried in sedan-chairs in copper-lid-shaped
hats. Fanning themselves, they passed by and were carried to the
palm-house and down corridors to their mats. I made the acquaintance of
a Japanese sailor; he was a genuine fellow, and took a lot of trouble to
satisfy my curiosity. I was introduced to his family; they lived at
Suraka, if I remember the name aright. I went into their house, a wicker
bungalow, and was greeted with, “O Hayo!”[14] Two daughters in kimonos,
pink and orange-yellow, waited on me, bowing and curtseying in Eastern
style. The old mother was intelligent-looking; she had a face like a
South Sea idol, with kind, dove-like eyes. The room was covered with
soft mats, and the walls, of matted panels, were carved with Oriental
designs. I felt exceedingly happy as I sat by the Oriental maidens and
ate savoury rice and fowl and drank saki. The daughters screamed with
laughter as I used chopsticks instead of the fork which they gave me. I
slept there that night and went with the family next day to see the
sights, among them the Asakusa Temple, where they worshipped the goddess
Kwannon. Beautiful green lands surrounded the Oriental city. Sarawana,
my Japanese sailor’s sister, shuffled beside me, chatting away in
Japanese as hard as her tongue could go, and pointing to the cherry and
plum trees in full bloom; the quaint old mother and the others came on
behind. They think a great deal of their cherry and plum trees, but as I
gazed at them I thought of dear old England. I did not hear the
blackbird singing in those cherry-trees; I only saw large crimson
butterflies flitting over the boughs, and, on the fair slopes, strange
bamboo-fenced bungalows, instead of the country cottages and smoking
chimneys of Kent.
Footnote 14:
Glad to see you.
They enticed me to a tea-room festival, where I had a large bowl of tea,
the national beverage. I sat cross-legged on a little mat by Sarawana,
whose bright eyes sparkled and whose red lips often parted in a cheery
laugh, revealing her pearly teeth. Geisha girls played samisens and
biwas, and danced in Oriental curves round us. They were mostly pretty
maidens, with small white teeth and eyes that peeped beneath their
pencilled brows like the frightened eyes of squirrels. They had
beautiful hair too, with a bit of the national cherry blossom stuck into
it. As they sang and strummed on their stringed, lyre-like instruments
they seemed perfectly oblivious of all around them; their oblique eyes
seemed to gaze on something miles away.
Sarawana had been a Geisha girl and played for her living as I had, and
so we became comrades. Next day I took her and her sister down by the
river. It was a beautiful spot; the banks were smothered with cherry and
plum trees, camphor woods and bamboos. “Why are you so sad, Sarawana?” I
said as I sat by her side. Her sister sat with a Japanese lad among the
bamboos just by. “Me litee Samaro, and he dead”; and then she sang a
little Japanese song, after wiping her eyes with the big sleeve of her
blue kimono. We were quite alone, only the little yellow birds twittered
in the plum boughs overhead. “What does that song mean, Sarawana?” I
said, and then she told me, in pidgin-English, its meaning.
“Unblown the cherry blossom blooms
Are hid in the cold of dead lips, weeping to blossom,
And crescent moons of coming springs
Are pale for ever in thine eyes—O my love,
Kwannon sits on her throne, Samaro,
Pale as chrysanthemums waiting thee
As camphor trees sigh over thy grave,
O my Samaro.”
“Did you love him much, Sarawana?”
“Me litee him as the birds the boughs; the river cry of him: ‘O my
Samaro!’” Then I tried to comfort her. “Laugh and be happy, and come on
the river in a pleasure junk,” for as I spoke a Japanese boatman
beckoned us, laid his rowing-poles down and started to bargain with me.
Then Sarawana answered: “Me litee you-ee; Geisha girl want be ap-pee
little while.”
“Of course,” I replied; and then she said: “Samaro dead, but he know me
good-ee and white man know-ee too!” Then she lifted her pale blue kimono
and revealed her tiny, clogged feet and ankles as she stepped into the
junk; and by my side, singing melody and words that I could not
understand, she went down the river. I thoroughly enjoyed myself,
sympathised with the sad little Geisha girl, and admired her modesty and
poetic tenderness for the dead youth that she loved.
I saw many Geisha girls and Japanese women of all classes, but they were
not all like Sarawana, and so I tell you of her. Japanese men and women
are very much like the white races; just one difference marks their
characters with a ray of spiritual light: the girls, boys, women and men
of Japan are poetic, everything about them is a symbol. A butterfly sat
on Sarawana’s hand: it was a kiss of her dead lover, and when it flew
away it went back to his grave to kiss the flowers and make him happy.
The birds in the plum trees sing old love vows; their wings fading in
the sunset are the beautiful thoughts of the dead or the living flying
home to heaven again. Japanese eyes shine with tears of joy as they
think of those things at which English girls and boys would toss their
heads back and scream with laughter.
I did not return to my ship, but stayed at Tokio till my money had all
gone. For a while I stopped with my Japanese sailor friend; he was a
generous fellow, and invited me to stay with him and his people as long
as I wished. I taught Sarawana to play some easy melodies on my violin,
and I was surprised at the quick way she picked up fiddle-playing. She
taught me to play one or two Japanese tunes, and I sat outside her
bamboo bungalow and played as she sang, and the cherry blossoms dropped
on us from the branches overhead.
I will not tell you all my experiences at Tokio, but I made a bold bid
to get a living out of my violin and secured several good pupils. A
Japanese lady of note was one of them; she was connected with the
Mikado’s Court and had relatives in Tokio. She paid me well, and I made
good headway with her, and she was exceedingly kind to me. I also had a
few Englishwomen as pupils, and went to Yokohama to give two of them
lessons daily.
Sarawana persuaded me to get up a kind of Geisha orchestra. She played
second fiddle and the cymbals. I ventured forth to a grand festival with
my Japanese Geisha troupe. When it became known that I was friendly with
the Geisha girls I lost my best pupils, though there was no harm in
anything that I did. Sarawana’s mother was pleased with our venture, and
was delighted when she saw her daughters dressed up in brilliant kimonos
and decked out in sashes of rich yellow and blue, with red flowers in
their hair! I thought more of the novelty of it than I did of the money
I might make. How romantic it all seemed as we marched along, laughing,
under the white-blossomed cherry-trees in far-off Japan. I did not know
that professors and teachers of English ladies should not go about with
Geisha girls. However, I enjoyed myself, and my memory of Sarawana and
Tince, her sister, as I called her, and her Geisha friends is sweeter to
me than the memory of those pupils I lost.
My Geisha troupe failed, and I secured an engagement as violinist at a
missionary hall. Sarawana and her family attended the meetings. I worked
there for about three weeks and received a good salary; it was easy, but
unmusical, work. I had to play the mission harmonium twice a day, on
Sundays three times. The hall was always crammed with converts: old men,
young men and girls, some of them dressed in Japanese costume and others
in European. Some wore tall hats and white collars; they sang English
hymns, though the words were translated into Japanese. The old men and
women sang very much out of tune, but looked very earnest; their wooden
mouths opened and shut as I scraped away. The mission was conducted by
English women missionaries, as well as by men. The Japanese women were
very decent people, and when I left they made a collection for me and
handed me quite a considerable sum. I composed a hymn and dedicated it
to the society, but whether they ever published it or not I do not know;
they said they would. When I bade my Japanese friends good-bye they
seemed sorry to see me go, especially Sarawana and my sailor comrade. He
had a wooden-looking face that smiled eternally, like a carved idol.
When he was fast asleep on his mat beside me he still smiled, and so he
was a good comrade, for I was subject to fits of depression, and when
the little Japanese maid would play her lament and sing of her dead
lover I used to wish she was not so faithful.
I was then about twenty-two years of age and had seen much of the world.
Very often I would lie awake for hours thinking of things that should
have happened, considering the great faith I had in them.
I sometimes thought of going back to England and settling down as a
violinist, but then the thought of my country’s terrible decorum quashed
my longing. I had been a good deal in Queensland and had several good
friends there; sad memories, too, of a bush girl’s grave by the swamp
oak gullies. Sometimes I longed for Australian bush scenes as a lad
longs for his own country. I had been to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and
Brisbane several times since I first saw them, but things even in one
short absence were rapidly changing. As the ships came in crammed with
emigrants from all parts of the world the surrounding bush-land of the
seaboard cities and towns was cut down and up went thousands of wooden
houses. And so old spots disappeared with the bush-land which the
Australian hates. If you say to a Colonial “I have been across hundreds
of miles of your bush-land with my swag, camping out,” he hangs his head
with shame, blushes and says: “I know, I know; but we hope soon to cut
it all down. I suppose you’ve seen our towns?”
There is no doubt about it, the majority of Australians born are ashamed
of the wild bush-lands, and love the streets and spires and walls of
bricks and mortar. Up country it’s all emigrant Englishmen, and a few
Australians who were born there and so could not help themselves. As for
me, I loved the bush and my memories of the bush, and when I went to the
old spots and saw wooden homesteads standing on the slopes where I
camped by my bush fire I felt sad about it, even world-weary and old as
I looked across the few years and saw the hollows and far-off forest
trees waving in the moonlight dusk for miles and miles along the shores
of my memory.
So I began to think of Australia again as I lay in bed at the Grand
Hotel, Yokohama, and dreamt of my old days there. I could not go back to
Tokio, at least anywhere near the mission folk, for I had told them I
was going straight back to England. I had really intended doing so, but
I thought I could get a berth on a ship and save my few pounds instead
of paying for my passage. In the end I was left almost penniless and
stranded in Yokohama. I lodged for a while at a European’s house. He had
married a Japanese woman and kept a kind of sailors’ lodging-home. I had
some strange companions in my rooms; I think they were Moslem, Buddhist
and Brahmin men. They were fierce-looking fellows, wore white turbans
and had swarthy faces with curly, close-cropped beards. They knelt on
little mats and prayed and chanted day and night. I found out after that
one or two of them were Mohammedans. Their ancient-looking faces wore an
Omar-Khayyám-like expression; from them I heard about Astoreth and
Osiris, Allah, Mahomet, and a lot more about Oriental and Eastern
creeds. I noticed that they were all very earnest in their prayers, and
when I walked suddenly into my room to fetch my violin one evening two
of them were kneeling in prayer at the window, worshipping the sunset.
They never turned a hair at my interruption, but went on pouring forth
solemn, strange words to the dying fires of Japan’s horizon. It seemed
to me then and now that all the so-called creeds were but one vast
monotheistic cry in various dialects, each creed a different expression
only, all of them instruments in the vast orchestra of life’s drama,
playing for the same end—universal, hopeful harmony. The stars vary in
magnitude and position, but they are all singing the same earnest
melody; for they too are finite, and sing on as those strange men did in
the Japanese doss-house at Yokohama.
I strolled along the wharfs at Yokohama harbour with a young English
sailor whom I met at the lodging-home. We were both extremely hard up.
Alongside the wharf lay the s.s. _Port Piree_, and we resolved to make a
dash for it and stow away. She was due to leave at sunset. The funnel
was belching forth smoke; the sailors were standing with their friends
on deck. With my violin in my hand I walked straight up the gangway, my
comrade just behind me. I was well dressed, and the quartermaster bowed
as I slipped on deck and asked to see the skipper. “He’s in his cabin, I
think, sir!” “All right,” I said, and beckoning my friend as though he
were my valet, I walked across the deck and along the starboard
alleyway. We stood by the stokehold entrance and waited our chance. The
hatchway to the coal bunkers was open. “Now!” I said. In a moment we had
taken the final plunge and disappeared in the ship’s bowels. Scrambling
across the coal, we huddled close together and waited. It seemed ages
before she went, and then we heard the rattling, rusty chain of the
anchor coming up and the throb of the winches, and the engines started;
we were off. My dear old comrade beside me, breathing in the darkness,
was worth his weight in gold. “We’re off now, Jack,” I said, and he
answered: “God knows where to, I don’t!” and laughed. We had some boiled
eggs and a cooked fowl, so we ate something and then slept. When we
awoke the boat was rolling heavily; it was dark, though possibly
daylight up on deck. I curled up by my chum and slept again. Three days
after we emerged, starving and sweating, choked with coal-dust and
looking like two dissipated negroes.
The chief mate said “Hello?” and we gave a grim smile as he said: “I
shall have to take you fellows up to the skipper.” Up we went and stood
on the bridge. The skipper gazed at us through the hot sunshine for a
moment sternly. No land in sight as the boat cut across the Pacific at
twelve knots. “Put them in the stokehold,” he said, and then turned on
his heel and started tramping the bridge once more.
By heavens! I was not built for stokehold work. For a week we shovelled
coal, and became like skeletons, sweating all our vigour away. Then I
played the violin to the engineers, and their chief got the head steward
to appeal for my services in the saloon. My comrade had to work still in
the stokehold, but I took care that he had good food. I commandeered
tins of stewed Californian pears and meat, and built his strength up. He
swallowed them down with coal-dust and repaid me with grateful eyes.
For out at sea with sailors a fellowship exists that is almost unknown
in the cities of the world. I suppose a ray of the illimitable gets into
their brains. The vastness of the ocean, its endless sky-lines, and the
ships appearing through them with singing sailors aloft, then passing
away, just as stars pass singing something in the uncounted ages of God:
these things unconsciously influence their souls and they become
children again, forgetting the respectability of civilisation and
feeling the humanity that makes men die for each other in the desert
spaces and oceans of the world.
Men slumbering in affluence and the tribal pride of some dubious
ancestry often appear soulless. Suddenly stricken with some grief or
poverty, they reveal something really decent in their natures, something
that longed for recognition when the body waxed fat on food and
pride—pride in the barbarian deeds of their ancestors, deeds which done
now would get the doer ten years in Sing Sing or Wormwood Scrubbs.
There’s nothing like living on “hard tack” in a tramp steamer’s
fo’c’sle, or on crab-apples in the Australian bush, or in cities by
playing the violin, to bring out the best or worst in men. Sorrow writes
the true Bible of the universe and expresses all the poetry of
existence.
[Illustration: BOTANICAL GARDENS, BALLARAT, N.S.W.]
Though I have seen much of the world and had many downfalls, the
atmosphere of my boyhood and its ideals remains. I still have deep faith
in God’s merciful Providence, in the friendship of men, and in the
earnest love of women. The old heroes of my dreaming boyhood still move
with me as I travel on; the kindly eyes of earnest men and women shine
through the mists of my memories and sweeten with light my dreaming
existence; not till I die will they die. I love to hear the laughter of
children; their innocent voices and little wails of grief express to me
cries from the great heart of music, till I fancy I can see the flowers
growing over their inevitable graves. In that feeling I love all men and
women; and those who have sinned have my unknown sympathy as well as my
unknown love.
Could I have my own way I would lead a vast army to demolish the mighty
cathedrals and churches of Europe, and to rob the wealth of the altars,
selling the debris and giving the proceeds of the glorious battle in the
cause of true religion to the thousands of starving little city
children, providing covering for their tiny emaciated bodies. God would
be my best friend in fighting for his helpless family and providing
comfort for deserted women and fallen men. There is more true unselfish
religion in saving a butterfly’s life than in moaning for many years in
a cathedral pew about your next lease of life.
But to return to my travels and troubles.
I well remember that stowaway trip. The boat was bound for Sydney. We
had beautiful weather, and when I was a legitimate member of the crew I
did not regret my headlong dip into the stokehold. My comrade and I were
treated well, and my violin brought me respect and applause when I
played in the saloon concert. My fiddle has always been a dear friend,
and wailed passionately on my behalf when I have been in disgrace. I
don’t think I could find a more trustful and soulful companion if I
started off to tramp the world again to-morrow.
As we were flying through Sydney Heads we received a message from the
captain. He wanted to see my comrade and me on the bridge. He was an
elderly, short-bearded man with kind eyes. “Well,” he said, “I shall
have to hand you two over to the authorities when we get in. Have you
anything to say for yourselves?”
“No, sir,” I said; “only we are sorry for stowing away, and wish to
thank you for your kindness to us under such circumstances.”
He said “Um,” and then stopped walking to and fro to say: “Have you got
any money?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We’ll go ashore and clear as soon as we get
alongside.”
“I’ll let you off this time.”
We both thanked him, and half-an-hour after the chief mate came up to
us, and saying, “Here you are,” handed us ten shillings each. They do
not always do that when you stowaway, but that was my lucky experience.
I can assure you that seafaring men are the bravest and kindest in the
world; they know it and its ways by instinct. Whenever I hear of a
captain going down with his ship a lump comes up in my throat.
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