_Maitre d'Hotel_ who was rapidly rising in rank, and was therefore under
as urgent necessity to impress us with his importance. Adolf was an
Anglicized German, with moustaches like the Kaiser's, and the swagger
of a drum-major. He treated our house as if it was the dining-room under
his command, locking and unlocking the street door, turning on and out
the lights on the stairs at any hour that suited him, however
inconvenient to the rest of us. He littered up the hall with his
children and his children's perambulators and hobby-horses, just where
we all had to stumble over them to get in or out. Nobody's taxi tooted
so loud as his, not even the Honourable's door had shut with such a
bang. Augustine's husband being also something in the same profession,
they both despised the Adolfs for putting on airs though no better than
themselves, while the Adolfs despised them for not having attained the
same splendid heights, and the shaking of my rugs out of the back
windows was seized upon as the excuse for open warfare. Augustine said
it was there they should be shaken according to the law in Paris, which
she thought good enough for London. Mrs. Adolf protested that the
shaking sent all the dust into her rooms. Augustine, whose English is
small and what there is of it not beyond reproach, called Mrs. Adolf
"silly fou," which must have been annoying, or harangued her in French
when Mrs. Adolf, who could not understand, suspected an offence in every
word.
Mrs. Adolf wrote to the Agent, to the Landlord, to me; she declared she
would summons me to the County Court. Between letters she watched at her
window for the rugs, and there both her servant and her charwoman made
faces at Augustine, who has a nice sense of justice and a temper that
does not permit her, with Elizabeth Bennet's father, to be satisfied by
laughing in her turn at those who have made sport of her. I trembled for
the consequences. But at the critical moment, Adolf was promoted to the
more splendid height of Manager and a larger salary; the taxi was
replaced by a motor-car of his own; Mrs. Adolf arrayed herself in muslin
and lace for the washtub, in nothing less elegant than velvet for the
street, and they left our old-fashioned chambers for the marble halls
and gilded gorgeousness of the modern mansion.
Of the several tenants after the Adolfs, I seem to remember little save
the complaints we interchanged. I tried my best to do as I would be done
by and to keep out of their way, but accident was always throwing us
together to our mutual indignation. There was the Bachelor whose
atrocious cook filled our chambers with the rank odours of smoked
herring and burnt meat, and whose deserted ladylove filled the stairs
with lamentations. There was the young Married Couple into whose bathtub
ours overflowed. There was the Accidental Actress whose loud voice and
heavy boots were the terror not only of our house, but of the street,
whose telephone rang from morning till night, whose dog howled all
evening when he was left alone as he usually was, and whose rehearsals
in her rooms interrupted the work in ours with ear-piercing yells of
"Murder" and "Villain."
I cannot recall them all, so rapidly did they come and go. We began to
fear that the life of the tenant was, as Tristram Shandy described the
life of man, a shifting from sorrow to sorrow. We lived in an atmosphere
of fault-finding, though when there was serious cause for complaint,
not a murmur could be wrung from the tenant below or, for that matter,
from a tenant in the house. All, like true Britons, refused to admit the
possibility of interests in common, and would not stir a hand, however
pressing the danger, so long as they were not disturbed. If our chambers
reeked with smoke and the smell of burning wood, they accepted the
information with calm indifference because theirs did not. Nor did it
serve as a useful precedent if, as it happened, smoke and smell were
traced again to a fire, smouldering as it had been for nobody knew how
long, in the cellar of the adjoining house, separated from ours only by
the "party wall" belonging to both: that ingenious contrivance of the
builder for creating ill-will between next-door neighbours. They
declined to feel the bannisters loose under their grasp, or to see the
wide gap opened in the same party wall after the fall of the roof of
Charing Cross Station had shaken the Quarter to its foundations and made
us believe for a moment that London was emulating Messina or San
Francisco. And I must add, so characteristic was it, that the Agent
dismissed our fears as idle, and that the Surveyor, sent at our request
by the County Council, laughed us to scorn. But we laughed best, for we
laughed last. A second Surveyor ordered the wall to be pulled down as
unsafe and rebuilt, and the Agent in the end found it prudent to support
the bannisters with iron braces.
When, after these trials and tribulations, Mr. Allan took the Second
Floor Back we thought the Millennium had come. He was a quiet man,
employed in the morning, so we were told, in writing a life of Chopin,
and in the evening, as we heard for ourselves, in playing Chopin
divinely. The piano is an instrument calculated to convert an otherwise
harmless neighbour into a nuisance, but of him it made a delight. He was
waited upon by a man as quiet, whose consideration for the tenants went
to the length of felt slippers in the house, who never slammed doors nor
sang, who never even whistled at his work. An eternity of peace seemed
to open out before us, but, as they say in novels, it was not to be. Our
confidence in Mr. Allan was first shaken by what I still think an
unjustified exhibition of nerves. One night, or rather one early
morning, a ring at our door-bell startled us at an hour when, in my
experience, it means either a fire or an American cablegram. It was
therefore the more exasperating, on opening the door, to be faced by an
irate little man in pyjamas and smoking jacket who wanted to know when
we proposed to go to bed. Only after J.'s answer "when we are ready,"
did we know it was Mr. Allan by his explanation that his bed was under
the room where we were walking about, that the floor was thin, and that
he could not sleep. J. would not enter into an argument. He said the
hour was not the most appropriate for a criticism of the construction of
the house which, besides, was at all hours the Landlord's and not his
affair, and Mr. Allan had the grace to carry his complaint no further.
It may have occurred to him on reflection that it was not our fault if
he had chosen a room to sleep in just below the room we used to sit and
see our friends in.
Had I borne malice, I should not have had to wait long for my revenge,
nor to plan it myself. Not many days later, Mr. Allan's servant,
watering the flowers on the open balcony at Mr. Allan's window, watered
by mistake the new Paris bonnet of the lady of the Ground Floor Back who
was coming home at that very minute. Under the circumstances few women
would not have lost their temper, but few would have been so prompt in
action. She walked straight upstairs to Mr. Allan's chambers, the wreck
in her hand. The servant opened to her knock, but she insisted upon
seeing the master.
"I have come, Allan, to tell you what I think of the conduct of your
servant," she said, when the master appeared. "Yes, I call you Allan,
for I mean to talk to you as man to man," which she proceeded to do.
I did not hear the talk, but it was almost a week before I heard the
piano again. Poor Mr. Allan! And this proved a trifle to the worse
humiliation he was soon to endure.
As I sat with a book by my lamp one evening before dinner, shrieks from
his chambers and a crash of crockery sent me rushing to the door and out
upon the landing, with Augustine at my heels. Old Tom and his wife
arrived there simultaneously, and, looking cautiously over the
bannisters, I saw an anxious crowd looking up as cautiously from the
hall on the Ground Floor. The shrieks developed into curses intermingled
with more riotous crashing of china. The Housekeeper, urged by the crowd
below, crept all unwilling to Mr. Allan's door and knocked. The door was
flung open, and, before she ventured to "beg pardon but the noise
disturbed the other tenants," Mr. Allan's hitherto well-behaved servant
greeted her with a volley of blood-curdling epithets and the smash of
every pane of glass in the upper panel of the door, and down she fled
again. He bolted out after her, but looking up and catching a glimpse of
Tom, peacefully sucking a lemon-drop, he became so personal that Tom and
his wife retreated hastily, and for the first time the smile faded from
the old man's face. In a moment's lull I heard Mr. Allan's voice, low
and entreating, then more curses, more crashes. I should not have
thought there was so much glass and crockery to be broken in the whole
house.
Presently a policeman appeared, and then a second. The door was open,
but the servant was busy finishing up the crockery. Mr. Allan spoke to
them, and then, like a flash, the servant was there too.
"I dare you to let them come in!" he yelled, so loud he could be heard
from the top to the bottom of the house. "I dare you to let them come
in! I dare you to give me in charge! I dare you! I dare you!"
And Mr. Allan did not dare, that was the astonishing part of it. And he
never lost his temper. He argued with the policemen, he plead with the
servant, while one group on our landing and another on the Ground Floor
waited anxiously. The policemen did not desert us but stood guard on the
Second Floor, which was a reassurance, until gradually the yells were
lowered, the crashes came at longer intervals, and at last, I suppose in
sheer exhaustion, the servant relapsed into his usual calm, Mr. Allan
"sported his oak," and I learned how truly an Englishman's home is his
castle.
The Housekeeper spent the evening on the stairs gossiping at every
door. There was not much to learn from her. A mystery was hinted--many
mysteries were hinted. The truth I do not know to this moment. I only
know that before the seven days of our wonder were over, the Agent, more
careworn than ever if that were possible, made a round of visits in the
house, giving to each tenant an ample and abject apology written by Mr.
Allan. At the end of the quarter, the Second Floor Back was again to
let.
We should have parted with Mr. Allan less light-heartedly could we have
anticipated what was in store for us. He was no sooner gone than the
Suffragettes came in.
I have no quarrel on political grounds with the Suffragettes.
Theoretically, I believe that women of property and position should have
their vote and that men without should not, but I think it a lesser evil
for women to be denied the vote than for the suffrage to become as
universal for women as for men, and to grant it on any other conditions
would be an indignity. I state the fact to explain that I am without
prejudice. I do not argue, for, to tell the truth, shocking as it may
be, I am not keen one way or the other. Life for me has grown crowded
enough without politics, and years have lessened the ardour for abstract
justice that was mine when, in my youth, I wrote the "Life of Mary
Wollstonecraft," and militant Suffragettes as yet were not. Ours are of
the most militant variety, and it is not their fault if the world by
this time does not know what this means. Even so, on general principles,
I should have no grievance against them. Every woman is free to make
herself ridiculous, and it is none of my business if my neighbours
choose to make a public spectacle of themselves by struggling in the
arms of policemen, or going into hysterics at meetings where nobody
wants them; if they like to emulate bad boys by throwing stones and
breaking windows, or if it amuses them to slap and whip unfortunate
statesmen who, physically, could easily convince them of their
inferiority. But when they make themselves a nuisance to me personally I
draw the line. And they are a nuisance to me.
They have brought pandemonium into the Quarter where once all was
pleasantness and peace. Of old, if the postman, the milkman, a messenger
boy, and one or two stray dogs and children lingered in our street, we
thought it a crowd; since the coming of the Suffragettes, I have seen
the same street packed solid with a horde of the most degenerate
creatures in London summoned by them "to rush the House of Commons."
They have ground their hurdy-gurdies at our door, Heaven knows to what
end; vans covered with their posters have obstructed our crossing;
motor-cars adorned with their flags have missed fire and exploded in our
street; and they have had themselves photographed as sandwiches on our
Terrace. Our house is in a turmoil from morning till night with women
charging in like a mob, or stealing out like conspirators. Their badges,
their sandwich boards, their banners lie about in our hall, so much in
everybody's way that I sympathized with the infuriated tenant whom I
caught one night kicking the whole collection into the cellar. They talk
so hard on the stairs that often they pass their own door and come on to
ours, bringing Augustine from her work and disturbing me at mine, for
she can never open to them without poking her head into my room to tell
me, "_Encore une sale Suffragette!_" In their chambers they never stop
chattering, and their high shrill treble penetrates through the floor
and reaches us up above. The climax came with their invasion of our
roof.
This roof, built "after the fire," is a modern invention, designed for
the torture of whoever lives underneath. It is flat, with a beautiful
view to be had among the chimney-pots and telephone wires; it is so thin
that a pigeon could not waddle across without being heard by us; and as
it is covered with gravel, every sound is accompanied by a scrunching
warranted to set the strongest nerves in a quiver. We had already been
obliged to represent to the Agent that it was not intended for the
Housekeeper's afternoon parties or young people's games of tag, that
there were other, more suitable places where postmen could take a rest,
or our actress recite her lines, or lovers do their courting amid the
smuts. Our patience, indeed, had been so tried in one way or another
that at the first sound from above, at any hour of the day or night, J.
was giving chase to the trespassers, and they were retreating before the
eloquence of his attack. It was in a corner of this roof, just above the
studio and in among wood-enclosed cisterns, that the Suffragettes
elected to send off fire-balloons, which, in some way best known to
themselves, were to impress mankind with the necessity of giving them
the vote. The first balloon floated above the chimney-tops, a sheet of
flame, and was dropping, happily into the Thames, when J., straight from
his printing-press, in blouse, sleeves rolled up, arms and hands black
with ink, a cap set sideways, was on the roof, and the Secretary of the
Militants and a young man in the brown suit and red tie that denote the
Socialist, in their hands matches and spirits of wine, were flying
downstairs. I was puzzled to account for their meekness unless it was
that never before had they seen anybody so inky, never before listened
to language so picturesque and American. J., without giving them time to
take breath, called in the Landlord's Agent, supported by the
Landlord's Solicitor, and they were convinced of the policy of
promising not to do it again. And of course they did.
A week later the Prime Minister was unveiling a statue, or performing
some equally innocent function in the garden below our windows, when the
Suffragettes, from the roofs of near woodsheds, demanded him through a
megaphone to give Votes to Women. We followed the movement with such
small zest that when we were first aware something out of the common was
going on in the Quarter, the two heroines were already in the arms of
policemen, where of late so much of the Englishwoman's time has been
spent, and heads were at every window up and down our street,
housekeepers at every door, butchers' and bakers' boys grouped on the
sidewalk, one or two tradesmen's carts drawn up in the gutter,
battalions of police round the corner. The women no doubt to-day boast
of the performance as a bold strike for freedom, and recall with pride
the sensation it created.
At this point I lost sight of the conflict on the roof below, for, from
the roof above, a balloon shot upwards, so high that only the angels
could have read the message it bore. The familiar scrunching, though
strangely muffled, was heard, and J., again in blouse and ink, was up
and away on a little campaign of his own. This time he found six women,
each with a pair of shoes at her side and her feet drawn up under her,
squatting in a ring behind the cisterns, bending over a can of spirits
of wine, and whispering and giggling like school-girls.
"It won't go off," they giggled, and the next minute all chance of its
ever going off was gone, for J. had seized the balloon and torn it to
tatters.
"You have destroyed our property," shrieked a venerable little old lady,
thin and withered, with many wrinkles and straggling grey hair.
He told her that was what he had intended to do.
"But it cost ten shillings," she squeaked in a tremor of rage, and with
an attempt at dignity, but it is as hard to be dignified, as Corporal
Trim found it to be respectful, when one is sitting squat upon the
ground.
A younger woman, golden-haired, in big hat and feathers, whom the
others called Duchess, demanded "Who are you anyhow?" And when I
consider his costume and his inkiness I wonder he had not been asked it
long before.
"You can go downstairs and find out," he said, "but down you go!"
There was a moment's visible embarrassment, and they drew their stocking
feet closer up under them. J., in whom they had left some few shreds of
the politeness which he, as a true American, believes is woman's due,
considerately looked the other way. As soon as they were able to rise up
in their shoes, they altogether lost their heads. The Housekeeper and
the Agent, summoned in the mean time, were waiting as they began to
crawl down the straight precipitous ladder from the roof. In an agony of
apprehension, the women clutched their skirts tight about them,
protesting and scolding the while. The little old lady tried to escape
into our chambers, one or two stood at the top of the stairs, cutting
off all approach, the others would not budge from our narrow landing. A
telegraph boy and a man with a parcel endeavoured to get past them and
up to us, but they would not give way an inch. Finally in despair, J.
gently collected them and pushed them down the stairs towards their own
door.
"We will have you arrested for assault!" the little old lady shrieked.
"We charge you with assault and battery," the golden-haired lady
re-echoed from below.
And we heard no more, for at last, with a sigh of relief, J. could get
to our door and shut out the still ascending uproar.
But that was not the end of it. If you can believe it, they were on the
roof again within an hour, getting themselves and their megaphone
photographed, for the fight for freedom would not be half so sweet
without the publicity of portraits in the press. And we were besieged
with letters. One Suffragette wrote that an apology was due,--yes, J.
replied, due to him. A second lectured him on the offence given to her
"dear friend, the Duchess," for to become a Suffragette is not to cease
to be a snob, and warned him that the Duchess--who was the golden-haired
lady and may have had the bluest blood of England in her veins, but who
looked more like one of the Gaiety girls, from whom the stock of the
British nobility has been so largely replenished--and the Duke intended
to consult their Solicitor if regret were not expressed. And the
Landlord's Agent called, and the Landlord's Solicitor followed, and a
Police Inspector was sent from Scotland Yard for facts,--and he
reprimanded J. for one mistake, for not having locked the door on the
inside when they were out,--and the insurance people wanted to know
about the fire-balloons, and everybody with any possible excuse came
down upon us, except the police officer with the warrant to arrest J.
for assault and battery.
It is all over now. If the Suffragettes still hatch their plots under
our roof, they are denied the use of it for carrying them out. They
leave us in peace for the moment, the quiet which is the charm of an old
house like ours has returned to it, and outwardly the tenants cultivate
the repose and dignity incumbent upon them as the descendants of Bacon
and Pepys and the inheritors of a great past.
_The Quarter_
[Illustration: OPPOSITE TO SURREY]
X
THE QUARTER
My windows command the Quarter, and what they do not overlook, Augustine
does.
Some people might think there could not be much to overlook, for the
Quarter is as quiet and secluded as the Inns of Court. J. is forever
boasting that if he is in London he is not of it, and that he lives the
simple life, with Charing Cross just round the corner. The "full tide of
existence" sweeps by, seldom overflowing into the Quarter, which is one
of the most difficult places in all the town to find for those who do
not know the way. Only two streets lead directly into it from anywhere,
and they lead directly nowhere out of it again; nor do the crowds in the
near Strand as much as see the dirty courts and dark alleys which are my
short cuts, much less the underground passages which serve the same
purpose,--the mysterious labyrinth of carpenters-shops and warehouses
and vast wine-cellars, grim and fantastic and unbelievable as Ali Baba
and the whole Arabian Nights, burrowed under the Quarter and approached
by tunnels, so picturesque that Gericault made a lithograph of one when
he was in London, so murderous that to this day they are infested with
police who turn a flashing bull's-eye upon you as you pass. Altogether,
the Quarter is a "shy place" full of traps for the unwary. I have had
friends, coming to see me for the first time, lose themselves in our
underground maze; I have known the crowd, pouring from the Strand on
Lord Mayor's Day, get hopelessly entangled in our network; as a rule,
nobody penetrates into it except on business or by chance.
But for all that, there is a good deal to see, and the Quarter, quiet
though it may be, is never dull as I watch it from my high windows. To
the front I look out on the Thames: down to St. Paul's, up to
Westminster, opposite to Surrey, and, on a clear day as far as the
hills. Trains rumble across the bridges, trams screech and clang along
the Embankment, tugs, pulling their line of black barges, whistle and
snort on the river. The tide brings with it the smell of the sea and, in
winter, the great white flights of gulls. At night myriads of lights
come out, and always, at all hours and all seasons, there is movement
and life,--always I seem to feel the pulse of London even as I have its
roar in my ears.
To the east I look down to streets of houses black with London grime,
still stately in their old-fashioned shabbiness, as old as the
Eighteenth Century, which I have read somewhere means the beginning of
the world for an American like myself.
To the west I tower over a wilderness of chimney-pots, for our house is
built on the edge of a hill, not very high though the London horse
mistakes it for an Alpine pass, but high enough to lift our walls, on
this side sheer and cliff-like, above an amazing collection of tumbled,
weather-worn, red-tiled roofs, and crooked gables sticking out at
unexpected angles, that date back I am not to be bullied by facts into
saying how far, and that stretch away, range upon range, to loftier
houses beyond, they in their turn over-shadowed by the hotels and clubs
on the horizon, and in among them, an open space with the spire of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields springing up out of it, dark by day, a white shadow
by night,--our ghost, we call it.