A MAN AND THE ABYSS
“I say, can you let a lodging?”
These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and
elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-house
down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.
“Oh yus,” she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not
approximating the standard of affluence required by her house.
I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in
silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my
reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my
pocket. The expected result was produced.
“Yus, sir,” she at once volunteered; “I ’ave nice lodgin’s you’d likely
tyke a fancy to. Back from a voyage, sir?”
“How much for a room?” I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.
She looked me up and down with frank surprise. “I don’t let rooms, not
to my reg’lar lodgers, much less casuals.”
“Then I’ll have to look along a bit,” I said, with marked
disappointment.
But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen. “I can let you
have a nice bed in with two hother men,” she urged. “Good, respectable
men, an’ steady.”
“But I don’t want to sleep with two other men,” I objected.
“You don’t ’ave to. There’s three beds in the room, an’ hit’s not a
very small room.”
“How much?” I demanded.
“’Arf a crown a week, two an’ six, to a regular lodger. You’ll fancy
the men, I’m sure. One works in the ware’ouse, an’ ’e’s been with me
two years now. An’ the hother’s bin with me six—six years, sir, an’ two
months comin’ nex’ Saturday. ’E’s a scene-shifter,” she went on. “A
steady, respectable man, never missin’ a night’s work in the time ’e’s
bin with me. An’ ’e likes the ’ouse; ’e says as it’s the best ’e can do
in the w’y of lodgin’s. I board ’im, an’ the hother lodgers too.”
“I suppose he’s saving money right along,” I insinuated innocently.
“Bless you, no! Nor can ’e do as well helsewhere with ’is money.”
And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and
unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a steady
and reliable man, never missing a night’s work, frugal and honest,
lodging in one room with two other men, paying two dollars and a half
per month for it, and out of his experience adjudging it to be the best
he could do! And here was I, on the strength of the ten shillings in my
pocket, able to enter in with my rags and take up my bed with him. The
human soul is a lonely thing, but it must be very lonely sometimes when
there are three beds to a room, and casuals with ten shillings are
admitted.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Thirteen years, sir; an’ don’t you think you’ll fancy the lodgin’?”
The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small
kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also
boarders. When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had she
let up once throughout the conversation. Undoubtedly she was a busy
woman. “Up at half-past five,” “to bed the last thing at night,”
“workin’ fit ter drop,” thirteen years of it, and for reward, grey
hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly figure, unending
toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced on an alley ten feet
between the walls, and a waterside environment that was ugly and
sickening, to say the least.
“You’ll be hin hagain to ’ave a look?” she questioned wistfully, as I
went out of the door.
And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper
truth underlying that very wise old maxim: “Virtue is its own reward.”
I went back to her. “Have you ever taken a vacation?” I asked.
“Vycytion!”
“A trip to the country for a couple of days, fresh air, a day off, you
know, a rest.”
“Lor’ lumme!” she laughed, for the first time stopping from her work.
“A vycytion, eh? for the likes o’ me? Just fancy, now!—Mind yer
feet!”—this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the rotten
threshold.
Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring
disconsolately at the muddy water. A fireman’s cap was pulled down
across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered
unmistakably of the sea.
“Hello, mate,” I greeted him, sparring for a beginning. “Can you tell
me the way to Wapping?”
“Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?” he countered, fixing my
nationality on the instant.
And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a
public-house and a couple of pints of “arf an’ arf.” This led to closer
intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling’s worth of
coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a bed, and
sixpence for more arf an’ arf, he generously proposed that we drink up
the whole shilling.
“My mate, ’e cut up rough las’ night,” he explained. “An’ the bobbies
got ’m, so you can bunk in wi’ me. Wotcher say?”
I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole
shilling’s worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in a
miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was. And that in
one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower-class
London workman, my later experience substantiates.
He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him. As a
child, his home was the streets and the docks. He had never learned to
read, and had never felt the need for it—a vain and useless
accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station in life.
He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all
crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular
food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never
went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his
own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a
trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and
then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.
And in the course of this he had also hammered out a philosophy of
life, an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical and
sensible one from his point of view. When I asked him what he lived
for, he immediately answered, “Booze.” A voyage to sea (for a man must
live and get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and the big
drunk at the end. After that, haphazard little drunks, sponged in the
“pubs” from mates with a few coppers left, like myself, and when
sponging was played out another trip to sea and a repetition of the
beastly cycle.
“But women,” I suggested, when he had finished proclaiming booze the
sole end of existence.
“Wimmen!” He thumped his pot upon the bar and orated eloquently.
“Wimmen is a thing my edication ’as learnt me t’ let alone. It don’t
pay, matey; it don’t pay. Wot’s a man like me want o’ wimmen, eh? jest
you tell me. There was my mar, she was enough, a-bangin’ the kids about
an’ makin’ the ole man mis’rable when ’e come ’ome, w’ich was seldom, I
grant. An’ fer w’y? Becos o’ mar! She didn’t make ’is ’ome ’appy, that
was w’y. Then, there’s the other wimmen, ’ow do they treat a pore
stoker with a few shillin’s in ’is trouseys? A good drunk is wot ’e’s
got in ’is pockits, a good long drunk, an’ the wimmen skin ’im out of
his money so quick ’e ain’t ’ad ’ardly a glass. I know. I’ve ’ad my
fling, an’ I know wot’s wot. An’ I tell you, where’s wimmen is
trouble—screechin’ an’ carryin’ on, fightin’, cuttin’, bobbies,
magistrates, an’ a month’s ’ard labour back of it all, an’ no pay-day
when you come out.”
“But a wife and children,” I insisted. “A home of your own, and all
that. Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on your
knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when she lays
the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they go to bed,
and the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of where you’ve
been and what you’ve seen, and of her and all the little happenings at
home while you’ve been away, and—”
“Garn!” he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder.
“Wot’s yer game, eh? A missus kissin’ an’ kids clim’in’, an’ kettle
singin’, all on four poun’ ten a month w’en you ’ave a ship, an’ four
nothin’ w’en you ’aven’t. I’ll tell you wot I’d get on four poun’ ten—a
missus rowin’, kids squallin’, no coal t’ make the kettle sing, an’ the
kettle up the spout, that’s wot I’d get. Enough t’ make a bloke
bloomin’ well glad to be back t’ sea. A missus! Wot for? T’ make you
mis’rable? Kids? Jest take my counsel, matey, an’ don’t ’ave ’em. Look
at me! I can ’ave my beer w’en I like, an’ no blessed missus an’ kids
a-crying for bread. I’m ’appy, I am, with my beer an’ mates like you,
an’ a good ship comin’, an’ another trip to sea. So I say, let’s ’ave
another pint. Arf an’ arf’s good enough for me.”
Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of
two-and-twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of
life and the underlying economic reason for it. Home life he had never
known. The word “home” aroused nothing but unpleasant associations. In
the low wages of his father, and of other men in the same walk in life,
he found sufficient reason for branding wife and children as
encumbrances and causes of masculine misery. An unconscious hedonist,
utterly unmoral and materialistic, he sought the greatest possible
happiness for himself, and found it in drink.
A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker’s
work; the gutter or the workhouse; and the end—he saw it all as clearly
as I, but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of his birth, all
the forces of his environment had tended to harden him, and he viewed
his wretched, inevitable future with a callousness and unconcern I
could not shake.
And yet he was not a bad man. He was not inherently vicious and brutal.
He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique. His eyes
were blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart. And there
was a laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind. The brow and general
features were good, the mouth and lips sweet, though already developing
a harsh twist. The chin was weak, but not too weak; I have seen men
sitting in the high places with weaker.
His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect
neck that I was not surprised by his body that night when he stripped
for bed. I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training
quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one
who stripped to better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty,
this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and
to pass hence without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was
his to bequeath.
It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to confess
that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in London Town.
Just as the scene-shifter was happier in making both ends meet in a
room shared with two other men, than he would have been had he packed a
feeble family along with a couple of men into a cheaper room, and
failed in making both ends meet.
And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is
criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the stones by
the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the social fabric,
while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish.
At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile. If
they reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of
itself. The work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care
to take part in it, nor are they able. Moreover, the work of the world
does not need them. There are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to
the steep slope above, and struggling frantically to slide no more.
In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and decade
after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life,
that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third
generation. Competent authorities aver that the London workman whose
parents and grand-parents were born in London is so remarkable a
specimen that he is rarely found.
Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor, and the residuum which
compose the “submerged tenth,” constitute 71 per cent, of the
population of London. Which is to say that last year, and yesterday,
and to-day, at this very moment, 450,000 of these creatures are dying
miserably at the bottom of the social pit called “London.” As to how
they die, I shall take an instance from this morning’s paper.
SELF-NEGLECT
Yesterday Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquest at Shoreditch, respecting
the death of Elizabeth Crews, aged 77 years, of 32 East Street,
Holborn, who died on Wednesday last. Alice Mathieson stated that she
was landlady of the house where deceased lived. Witness last saw her
alive on the previous Monday. She lived quite alone. Mr. Francis Birch,
relieving officer for the Holborn district, stated that deceased had
occupied the room in question for thirty-five years. When witness was
called, on the 1st, he found the old woman in a terrible state, and the
ambulance and coachman had to be disinfected after the removal. Dr.
Chase Fennell said death was due to blood-poisoning from bed-sores, due
to self-neglect and filthy surroundings, and the jury returned a
verdict to that effect.
The most startling thing about this little incident of a woman’s death
is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon it and
rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years of age
should die of SELF-NEGLECT is the most optimistic way possible of
looking at it. It was the old dead woman’s fault that she died, and
having located the responsibility, society goes contentedly on about
its own affairs.
Of the “submerged tenth” Mr. Pigou has said: “Either through lack of
bodily strength, or of intelligence, or of fibre, or of all three, they
are inefficient or unwilling workers, and consequently unable to
support themselves . . . They are often so degraded in intellect as to
be incapable of distinguishing their right from their left hand, or of
recognising the numbers of their own houses; their bodies are feeble
and without stamina, their affections are warped, and they scarcely
know what family life means.”
Four hundred and fifty thousand is a whole lot of people. The young
fireman was only one, and it took him some time to say his little say.
I should not like to hear them all talk at once. I wonder if God hears
them?