[Illustration]
The People of the Abyss
by Jack London
Contents
PREFACE
I. THE DESCENT
II. JOHNNY UPRIGHT
III. MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS
IV. A MAN AND THE ABYSS
V. THOSE ON THE EDGE
VI. FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO
VII. A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
VIII. THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER
IX. THE SPIKE
X. CARRYING THE BANNER
XI. THE PEG
XII. CORONATION DAY
XIII. DAN CULLEN, DOCKER
XIV. HOPS AND HOPPERS
XV. THE SEA WIFE
XVI. PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON
XVII. INEFFICIENCY
XVIII. WAGES
XIX. THE GHETTO
XX. COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES
XXI. THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF LIFE
XXII. SUICIDE
XXIII. THE CHILDREN
XXIV. A VISION OF THE NIGHT
XXV. THE HUNGER WAIL
XXVI. DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT
XXVII. THE MANAGEMENT
The chief priests and rulers cry:—
“O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold thine images how they stand
Sovereign and sole through all our land.
“Our task is hard—with sword and flame,
To hold thine earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep,
Still as thou leftest them, thy sheep.”
Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl whose fingers thin
Crushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set he in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment hem
For fear of defilement, “Lo, here,” said he,
“The images ye have made of me.”
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
PREFACE
The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of
1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of
mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be
convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of
those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone
before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to
measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for
physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life,
which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.
It will be readily apparent to the reader that I saw much that was bad.
Yet it must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was
considered “good times” in England. The starvation and lack of shelter
I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery which is never
wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity.
Following the summer in question came a hard winter. Great numbers of
the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time,
and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr.
Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January 1903, to the New York
_Independent_, briefly epitomises the situation as follows:—
“The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds
who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and
shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in
trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the
garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys. The quarters of the
Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by hosts
of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means
of sustenance can be provided.”
It has been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they
are in England is too pessimistic. I must say, in extenuation, that of
optimists I am the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less by
political aggregations than by individuals. Society grows, while
political machines rack to pieces and become “scrap.” For the English,
so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness go, I see a
broad and smiling future. But for a great deal of the political
machinery, which at present mismanages for them, I see nothing else
than the scrap heap.
JACK LONDON.
PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.
CHAPTER I.
THE DESCENT
“But you can’t do it, you know,” friends said, to whom I applied for
assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of
London. “You had better see the police for a guide,” they added, on
second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the
psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better
credentials than brains.
“But I don’t want to see the police,” I protested. “What I wish to do
is to go down into the East End and see things for myself. I wish to
know how those people are living there, and why they are living there,
and what they are living for. In short, I am going to live there
myself.”
“You don’t want to _live_ down there!” everybody said, with
disapprobation writ large upon their faces. “Why, it is said there are
places where a man’s life isn’t worth tu’pence.”
“The very places I wish to see,” I broke in.
“But you can’t, you know,” was the unfailing rejoinder.
“Which is not what I came to see you about,” I answered brusquely,
somewhat nettled by their incomprehension. “I am a stranger here, and I
want you to tell me what you know of the East End, in order that I may
have something to start on.”
“But we know nothing of the East End. It is over there, somewhere.” And
they waved their hands vaguely in the direction where the sun on rare
occasions may be seen to rise.
“Then I shall go to Cook’s,” I announced.
“Oh yes,” they said, with relief. “Cook’s will be sure to know.”
But O Cook, O Thomas Cook & Son, path-finders and trail-clearers,
living sign-posts to all the world, and bestowers of first aid to
bewildered travellers—unhesitatingly and instantly, with ease and
celerity, could you send me to Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet, but
to the East End of London, barely a stone’s throw distant from Ludgate
Circus, you know not the way!
“You can’t do it, you know,” said the human emporium of routes and
fares at Cook’s Cheapside branch. “It is so—hem—so unusual.”
“Consult the police,” he concluded authoritatively, when I had
persisted. “We are not accustomed to taking travellers to the East End;
we receive no call to take them there, and we know nothing whatsoever
about the place at all.”
“Never mind that,” I interposed, to save myself from being swept out of
the office by his flood of negations. “Here’s something you can do for
me. I wish you to understand in advance what I intend doing, so that in
case of trouble you may be able to identify me.”
“Ah, I see! should you be murdered, we would be in position to identify
the corpse.”
He said it so cheerfully and cold-bloodedly that on the instant I saw
my stark and mutilated cadaver stretched upon a slab where cool waters
trickle ceaselessly, and him I saw bending over and sadly and patiently
identifying it as the body of the insane American who _would_ see the
East End.
“No, no,” I answered; “merely to identify me in case I get into a
scrape with the ’bobbies.’” This last I said with a thrill; truly, I
was gripping hold of the vernacular.
“That,” he said, “is a matter for the consideration of the Chief
Office.”
“It is so unprecedented, you know,” he added apologetically.
The man at the Chief Office hemmed and hawed. “We make it a rule,” he
explained, “to give no information concerning our clients.”
“But in this case,” I urged, “it is the client who requests you to give
the information concerning himself.”
Again he hemmed and hawed.
“Of course,” I hastily anticipated, “I know it is unprecedented, but—”
“As I was about to remark,” he went on steadily, “it is unprecedented,
and I don’t think we can do anything for you.”
However, I departed with the address of a detective who lived in the
East End, and took my way to the American consul-general. And here, at
last, I found a man with whom I could “do business.” There was no
hemming and hawing, no lifted brows, open incredulity, or blank
amazement. In one minute I explained myself and my project, which he
accepted as a matter of course. In the second minute he asked my age,
height, and weight, and looked me over. And in the third minute, as we
shook hands at parting, he said: “All right, Jack. I’ll remember you
and keep track.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Having burnt my ships behind me, I was now
free to plunge into that human wilderness of which nobody seemed to
know anything. But at once I encountered a new difficulty in the shape
of my cabby, a grey-whiskered and eminently decorous personage who had
imperturbably driven me for several hours about the “City.”
“Drive me down to the East End,” I ordered, taking my seat.
“Where, sir?” he demanded with frank surprise.
“To the East End, anywhere. Go on.”
The hansom pursued an aimless way for several minutes, then came to a
puzzled stop. The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the cabman
peered down perplexedly at me.
“I say,” he said, “wot plyce yer wanter go?”
“East End,” I repeated. “Nowhere in particular. Just drive me around
anywhere.”
“But wot’s the haddress, sir?”
“See here!” I thundered. “Drive me down to the East End, and at once!”
It was evident that he did not understand, but he withdrew his head,
and grumblingly started his horse.
Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject
poverty, while five minutes’ walk from almost any point will bring one
to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one
unending slum. The streets were filled with a new and different race of
people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance. We
rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross
street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery. Here and
there lurched a drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene with
sounds of jangling and squabbling. At a market, tottery old men and
women were searching in the garbage thrown in the mud for rotten
potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while little children clustered like
flies around a festering mass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the
shoulders into the liquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but
partially decayed, which they devoured on the spot.
Not a hansom did I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an
apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran
after it and alongside. And as far as I could see were the solid walls
of brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and for the
first time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me. It was like the
fear of the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street upon street,
seemed so many waves of a vast and malodorous sea, lapping about me and
threatening to well up and over me.
“Stepney, sir; Stepney Station,” the cabby called down.
I looked about. It was really a railroad station, and he had driven
desperately to it as the one familiar spot he had ever heard of in all
that wilderness.
“Well,” I said.
He spluttered unintelligibly, shook his head, and looked very
miserable. “I’m a strynger ’ere,” he managed to articulate. “An’ if yer
don’t want Stepney Station, I’m blessed if I know wotcher do want.”
“I’ll tell you what I want,” I said. “You drive along and keep your eye
out for a shop where old clothes are sold. Now, when you see such a
shop, drive right on till you turn the corner, then stop and let me
out.”
I could see that he was growing dubious of his fare, but not long
afterwards he pulled up to the curb and informed me that an old-clothes
shop was to be found a bit of the way back.
“Won’tcher py me?” he pleaded. “There’s seven an’ six owin’ me.”
“Yes,” I laughed, “and it would be the last I’d see of you.”
“Lord lumme, but it’ll be the last I see of you if yer don’t py me,” he
retorted.
But a crowd of ragged onlookers had already gathered around the cab,
and I laughed again and walked back to the old-clothes shop.
Here the chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that I
really and truly wanted old clothes. But after fruitless attempts to
press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring
to light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and hinting
darkly. This he did with the palpable intention of letting me know that
he had “piped my lay,” in order to bulldose me, through fear of
exposure, into paying heavily for my purchases. A man in trouble, or a
high-class criminal from across the water, was what he took my measure
for—in either case, a person anxious to avoid the police.
But I disputed with him over the outrageous difference between prices
and values, till I quite disabused him of the notion, and he settled
down to drive a hard bargain with a hard customer. In the end I
selected a pair of stout though well-worn trousers, a frayed jacket
with one remaining button, a pair of brogans which had plainly seen
service where coal was shovelled, a thin leather belt, and a very dirty
cloth cap. My underclothing and socks, however, were new and warm, but
of the sort that any American waif, down in his luck, could acquire in
the ordinary course of events.
“I must sy yer a sharp ’un,” he said, with counterfeit admiration, as I
handed over the ten shillings finally agreed upon for the outfit.
“Blimey, if you ain’t ben up an’ down Petticut Lane afore now. Yer
trouseys is wuth five bob to hany man, an’ a docker ’ud give two an’
six for the shoes, to sy nothin’ of the coat an’ cap an’ new stoker’s
singlet an’ hother things.”
“How much will you give me for them?” I demanded suddenly. “I paid you
ten bob for the lot, and I’ll sell them back to you, right now, for
eight! Come, it’s a go!”
But he grinned and shook his head, and though I had made a good
bargain, I was unpleasantly aware that he had made a better one.
I found the cabby and a policeman with their heads together, but the
latter, after looking me over sharply, and particularly scrutinizing
the bundle under my arm, turned away and left the cabby to wax mutinous
by himself. And not a step would he budge till I paid him the seven
shillings and sixpence owing him. Whereupon he was willing to drive me
to the ends of the earth, apologising profusely for his insistence, and
explaining that one ran across queer customers in London Town.
But he drove me only to Highbury Vale, in North London, where my
luggage was waiting for me. Here, next day, I took off my shoes (not
without regret for their lightness and comfort), and my soft, grey
travelling suit, and, in fact, all my clothing; and proceeded to array
myself in the clothes of the other and unimaginable men, who must have
been indeed unfortunate to have had to part with such rags for the
pitiable sums obtainable from a dealer.
Inside my stoker’s singlet, in the armpit, I sewed a gold sovereign (an
emergency sum certainly of modest proportions); and inside my stoker’s
singlet I put myself. And then I sat down and moralised upon the fair
years and fat, which had made my skin soft and brought the nerves close
to the surface; for the singlet was rough and raspy as a hair shirt,
and I am confident that the most rigorous of ascetics suffer no more
than I did in the ensuing twenty-four hours.
The remainder of my costume was fairly easy to put on, though the
brogans, or brogues, were quite a problem. As stiff and hard as if made
of wood, it was only after a prolonged pounding of the uppers with my
fists that I was able to get my feet into them at all. Then, with a few
shillings, a knife, a handkerchief, and some brown papers and flake
tobacco stowed away in my pockets, I thumped down the stairs and said
good-bye to my foreboding friends. As I passed out of the door, the
“help,” a comely middle-aged woman, could not conquer a grin that
twisted her lips and separated them till the throat, out of involuntary
sympathy, made the uncouth animal noises we are wont to designate as
“laughter.”
No sooner was I out on the streets than I was impressed by the
difference in status effected by my clothes. All servility vanished
from the demeanour of the common people with whom I came in contact.
Presto! in the twinkling of an eye, so to say, I had become one of
them. My frayed and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and
advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of like
kind, and in place of the fawning and too respectful attention I had
hitherto received, I now shared with them a comradeship. The man in
corduroy and dirty neckerchief no longer addressed me as “sir” or
“governor.” It was “mate” now—and a fine and hearty word, with a tingle
to it, and a warmth and gladness, which the other term does not
possess. Governor! It smacks of mastery, and power, and high
authority—the tribute of the man who is under to the man on top,
delivered in the hope that he will let up a bit and ease his weight,
which is another way of saying that it is an appeal for alms.
This brings me to a delight I experienced in my rags and tatters which
is denied the average American abroad. The European traveller from the
States, who is not a Croesus, speedily finds himself reduced to a
chronic state of self-conscious sordidness by the hordes of cringing
robbers who clutter his steps from dawn till dark, and deplete his
pocket-book in a way that puts compound interest to the blush.
In my rags and tatters I escaped the pestilence of tipping, and
encountered men on a basis of equality. Nay, before the day was out I
turned the tables, and said, most gratefully, “Thank you, sir,” to a
gentleman whose horse I held, and who dropped a penny into my eager
palm.
Other changes I discovered were wrought in my condition by my new garb.
In crossing crowded thoroughfares I found I had to be, if anything,
more lively in avoiding vehicles, and it was strikingly impressed upon
me that my life had cheapened in direct ratio with my clothes. When
before I inquired the way of a policeman, I was usually asked, “Bus or
’ansom, sir?” But now the query became, “Walk or ride?” Also, at the
railway stations, a third-class ticket was now shoved out to me as a
matter of course.
But there was compensation for it all. For the first time I met the
English lower classes face to face, and knew them for what they were.
When loungers and workmen, at street corners and in public-houses,
talked with me, they talked as one man to another, and they talked as
natural men should talk, without the least idea of getting anything out
of me for what they talked or the way they talked.
And when at last I made into the East End, I was gratified to find that
the fear of the crowd no longer haunted me. I had become a part of it.
The vast and malodorous sea had welled up and over me, or I had slipped
gently into it, and there was nothing fearsome about it—with the one
exception of the stoker’s singlet.