instead of the tiny strip framed in by the narrow street which is the
usual share of the Londoner. We could see the sun rise every morning
behind St. Paul's, if we were up in time, and of course if there was a
sun every morning in London to rise. Over the river, when fog and mist
do not envelop it as in a shroud, the clouds--the big, low, heavy
English clouds--float and drift and scurry and whirl and pile themselves
into mountains with a splendour that might have inspired Ruskin to I do
not know how many more chapters in "Modern Painters" had he lived in the
Quarter. Behind our collection of tumbled roofs and gables awry, the
sun--always provided there is a sun--sets with a dramatic gorgeousness
that, if it were only in any remote part of the world, the Londoner
would spare himself no time nor trouble to see, but that, because it is
in London, remains a spectacle for us to enjoy by ourselves. And the
wonder grows with the night,--the river, with its vague distances and
romantic glooms and starlike lights, losing itself in mystery, and
mystery lurking in the little old streets with their dark spectral mass
of houses, broken by one or two spaces of flat white wall, and always in
the distance the clubs and hotels, now castles and cathedrals, and the
white tapering ghost pointing heavenward. With so stupendous a spectacle
arranged for my benefit, is it any marvel that much of my time is spent
at my windows? And how can I help it if, when I am there, I see many
things besides the beauty that lured us to the Quarter and keeps us in
it?
Hundreds of windows look over into mine: some so far off that they are
mere glittering spots on a rampart of high walls in the day-light, mere
dots of light at dusk; some as carefully curtained as if the "Drawn
Blinds" or "Green Shutters" of romance had not stranger things to hide
from the curious. But others are too near and too unveiled for what
goes on behind them to escape the most discreet. In what does go on
there is infinite variety, for the Quarter, like the Inns of Court, is
let out in offices and chambers, and the house that shelters but one
tenant is the exception, if indeed it exists.
All these windows and the people I see through them have become as much
a part of my view as the trains and the trams, the taxis and the tugs. I
should think the last days of the Quarter were at hand if, the first
thing in the morning, I did not find the printer hard at work at his
window under one of the little gables below; or if, the last thing at
night, I missed from the attic next door to him the lamp of the artist,
who never gets up until everybody else is going to bed; or if, at any
hour I looked over, people were not playing cards in the first-floor
windows of the house painted white, or frowzy women were not leaning out
of the little garret windows above, or the type-writer was not clicking
hard in the window with the white muslin curtains and the pot of
flowers, or the manicurist not receiving her clients behind the window
with the staring, new yellow blinds. I should regret even the fiery,
hot-tempered, little woman who jumps up out of the attic window
immediately below us, like a Jack-in-the-box, and shakes her fist at us
every time Augustine shakes those unfortunate rugs which are perpetually
getting us into trouble with our neighbours. I should think the picture
incomplete if, of an evening, the diners out were to disappear from
behind the windows of the big hotel, though nothing makes me more
uncomfortably conscious of the "strangely mingled monster" that London
is, than the contrast between them lingering over the day's fourth
banquet, and the long black "hunger line" forming of a winter morning
just beside Cleopatra's Needle and waiting in dreary patience for the
daily dole of bread and soup.
I cannot imagine the Quarter without actors and actresses in possession
of dozens of its windows, the attraction to them less the associations
with Garrick than the convenient proximity to the principal theatres; or
without the Societies, Institutes, Leagues, Bureaus, Companies,
Associations, and I know not what else, that undertake the charge of
everything under the sun, from ancient buildings to women's freedom; or
without the clubs, where long-haired men and Liberty-gowned women meet
to drink tea and dabble in anarchy; where more serious citizens propose
to refashion the world and mankind, and, incidentally, British politics;
where, in a word, philanthropists of every pattern fill the very air of
the Quarter with reform, until my escape from degenerating into a
reformer despite myself seems a daily miracle, and the sham Bohemianism
of the one club willing to let the rest of the world take care of itself
becomes almost a virtue.
It is probably the seclusion, the cloistral repose, of the Quarter that
attracts the student and the scholar. Up at my windows, the busy bee
would be given points in the art of improving each shining hour. In
every direction I turn I am so edified by the example of hard work that
I long for the luxury of being shocked by idleness.
Behind the window I look down into at right angles from the studio, the
Scientist in white apron, surrounded by bottles and retorts and
microscopes, industriously examines germs from morning till midnight,
oblivious to everything outside, which for too long meant, among other
things, showers of soft white ashes and evil greasy smoke and noxious
odours sent by the germs up through his chimneys into our studio; nor
could the polite representations of our Agent that he was a public
nuisance rouse him from his indifference, since he knew that the smoke
was not black enough to make him one technically. It was only when J.
protested, with an American energy effective in England, that the germs
ceased to trouble us and I could bear unmoved the sight of the
white-aproned Scientist behind his window.
In the new house with the flat roof the Inventor has his office, and I
am sure it is the great man himself I so often see walking gravely up
and down among the chimney-pots, evolving and planning new wireless
wonders; and I am as sure that the solemn St. Bernard who walks there
too is his, and, in some way it is not for me to explain, part of the
mysterious machinery connecting the Quarter with the rest of the world.
Plainly visible in more rooms than one, bending over high drawing-tables
not only through the day but on into the night, are many Architects,
with whom the Quarter has ever been in favour since the masters who
designed it years ago made their headquarters in our street, until
yesterday, when the young man who is building the Town Hall for the
County Council moved into it, though, had the County Council had its
way, there would be no Quarter now for an Architect to have his office
in. Architectural distinction, or picturesqueness, awakes in the London
official such a desire to be rid of it that, but for the turning of the
worm who pays the rates, our old streets and Adam houses would have been
pulled down to make place for the brand-new municipal building which, as
it is, has been banished out of harm's way to the other side of the
river.
Busier still than the Architects are the old men who live in the two
ancient houses opposite mine, where the yellow brick just shows here
and there through the centuries' grime, and where windows as
grimy--though a clause in the leases of the Quarter demands that windows
should be washed at least once a month--open upon little ironwork
balconies and are draped with draggled lace-curtains, originally white
but now black. I have no idea who the old men are, or what is the task
that absorbs them. They look as ancient as the houses and so alike that
I could not believe there were three of them if, every time I go to my
dining-room window, I did not see them all three in their chambers, two
on the third floor, to the left and right of me, one on the floor below
about halfway between,--making, J. says, an amusing kind of pattern.
Each lives alone, each has a little table drawn up to his window, and
there they sit all day long, one on an easy leather chair, one on a
stiff cane-bottomed chair, one on a hard wooden stool,--that is the only
difference. There they are perpetually sorting and sifting papers from
which nothing tears them away; there they have their midday chop and
tankard of bitter served to them as they work, and there they snatch a
few hasty minutes afterwards to read the day's news. They never go out
unless it is furtively, after dark, and I have never failed to find them
at their post except occasionally on Sunday morning, when the chairs by
the tables are filled by their clothes instead of themselves, because, I
fancy, the London housekeeper, who leaves her bed reluctantly every day
in the week but who on that morning is not to be routed out of it at
all, refuses to wake them or to bring them their breakfast. They may be
solicitors, but I do not think so; they may be literary men, but I do
not think that either; and, really, I should just as lief not be told
who and what they are, so much more in keeping is mystery with the grimy
old houses where their old days are spent in endless toiling over
endless tasks.
If the three old men are not authors, plenty of my other neighbours are,
as they should be out of compliment to Bacon and Pepys, to Garrick and
Topham Beauclerk, to Dr. Johnson and Boswell, to Rousseau and David
Copperfield, and to any number besides who, in their different days,
belonged to or haunted the Quarter and made it a world of memories for
all who came after. I have authors on every side of me: not Chattertons
undiscovered in their garrets, but celebrities wallowing in success,
some of whom might be the better for neglect. Many a young enthusiast
comes begging for the privilege of gazing from my windows into theirs. I
have been assured that the walls of the Quarter will not hold the
memorial tablets which we of the present generation are preparing for
their decoration. The "best sellers" are issued, and the Repertory
Theatre nourished, from our midst.
The clean-shaven man of legal aspect who arrives at his office over the
way as regularly as the clock strikes ten, who leaves it as regularly at
one for his lunch, and as regularly in the late afternoon closes up for
the day, is the Novelist whose novels are on every bookstall and whose
greatness is measured by the thousands and hundreds of thousands into
which they run. He does not do us the honour of living in the Quarter,
but comes to it simply in office hours, and is as scrupulously punctual
as if his business were with briefs rather than with dainty trifles
lighter than the lightest froth. No clerk could be more exact in his
habits. Anthony Trollope was not more methodical. This admirable
precision might cost him the illusions of his admirers, but to me it is
invaluable. For when the wind is in the wrong direction and I cannot
hear Big Ben, or the fog falls and I cannot see St. Martin's spire, I
have only to watch for him to know the hour, and in a household where no
two clocks or watches agree as to time, the convenience is not to be
exaggerated.
My neighbour from the house on the river-front, next to Peter the
Great's, who often drops in for a talk and whom Augustine announces as
_le Monsieur du Quartier_, is the American Dramatist, author of the play
that was the most popular of the season last year in New York. I should
explain, perhaps, that Augustine has her own names for my friends, and
that usually her announcements require interpretation. For instance, few
people would recognize my distinguished countryman, the Painter, in _le
Monsieur de la Dame qui ne monte jamais les escaliers_, or the
delightful Lady Novelist in _la Demoiselle aux chats_, or--it is wiser
not to say whom in _le Monsieur qui se gobe_. But I have come to
understand even her fine shades, and when she announces _les Gens du
Quartier_, then I know it is not the American Dramatist, but the British
Publicist and his wife who live in Garrick's house, and who add to their
distinction by dining in the room where Garrick died.
The red curtains a little further down the street belong to the
enterprising Pole, who, from his chambers in the Quarter, edits the
Polish Punch, a feat which I cannot help thinking, though I have never
seen the paper, must be the most comic thing about it. In the house on
one side, the author who is England's most distinguished Man of Letters
to-day, and who has become great as a novelist, began life as an
architect. From the house on the other side, the Poet-Patriot-Novelist
of the Empire fired, or tried to fire, the Little Englanders with his
own blustering, knock-you-down Imperialism, and bullied and flattered
them, amused and abused them, called them names they would not have
forgiven from any other man living and could not easily swallow from
him, and was all the while himself so simple and unassuming that next to
nobody knew he was in the Quarter until he left it. The British
Dramatist close by, who conquers the heart of the sentimental British
public by sentiment, is just as unassuming. He is rarely without a play
on the London stage, rarely without several on tour. He could probably
buy out everybody in the Quarter, except perhaps the Socialist, and he
can lose a little matter of sixteen thousand pounds or so and never miss
it. But so seldom is he seen that you might think he was afraid to show
himself. "You'd never know 'e was in the 'ouse, 'e's that quiet like.
Why, 'e never gives no trouble to nobody," the Housekeeper has confided
to me. He shrinks from putting his name on his front door, though by
this time he must be used to its staring at him in huge letters from
posters and playbills all over the world. Perhaps it is to give himself
courage that he keeps a dog who is as forward as his master is retiring,
and who is my terror. I am on speaking terms with most of the dogs of
the Quarter, but with the Dramatist's I have never ventured to exchange
a greeting. I happened to mention my instinctive distrust, one day, to a
friend who has made the dog's personal acquaintance.
"He eats kids!" was my friend's comment. Then he added: "You have seen
dozens of children go up to the Dramatist's room, haven't you?"
"Yes," I answered, for it was a fact.
"Well, and have you ever seen one come down again?" And if you will
believe it, I never have.
A door or so from the Dramatist, but on the opposite side of the street,
the Socialist's windows face mine. I cannot, with any respect for truth,
call him unassuming; modesty is not his vice. It is not his ambition to
hide his light under a bushel,--or rather a hogshead; on the contrary,
as he would be the first to admit, it could not flare on too many
housetops to please him. When I first met him, years before we again met
in the Quarter, the world had not heard of him, but he was quite frank
in his determination that it should, though to make it hear, he would
have to play a continuous solo on his own cornet, until he impressed
somebody else with the necessity of blowing it for him. Besides, he has
probably never found other people as entertaining as himself, which is
an excellent reason why he should not keep himself out of his talk and
his writing,--and he is talking and writing all the time. His is a
familiar voice among the Fabians, on public platforms, and at private
meetings, and for a very little while it was listened to by bewildered
Borough Councillors. He has as many plays to his credit as the British
Dramatist, as many books as the Novelist, and I recall no other writer
who can equal him in the number and length of his letters to the press.
As he courts, rather than evades, notice, I doubt if he would be
embarrassed to learn how repeatedly I see him doing his hair and beard
in the morning and putting out his lights at night, or how entirely I am
in his confidence as to the frequency of his luncheon parties and the
number of his guests. Were I not the soul of discretion I could publish
his daily _menu_ to the world, for his kitchen opens itself so
aggressively to my view that I see into it as often as into my own.
For that matter, I have under my inspection half the kitchens in the
Quarter, and the things I witness in them might surprise or horrify more
than one woman who imagines herself mistress in her own house. I have
assisted at the reception of guests she never invited; I understand, if
she does not, why her gas and electric-light bills reach such fabulous
figures; I could tell her what happens when her motor-car disappears
round the corner,--for, seedy and down-at-heel as the Quarter may
appear, the private motor is by no means the exception among the
natives. Only the other day, when the literary family, who are as
unsuspicious as they are fond of speed, started in their motor for the
week-end, they could have got no further than the suburbs before the
cloth was laid in their dining-room, their best china, silver, and glass
brought out, flowers, bottles, and siphons in place, and their cook at
the head of their table "entertaining her friends to luncheon." The
party were lingering over the fruit when suddenly a motor-horn was heard
in the street. There was a look of horror on all their faces, one short
second of hesitation, and then a wild leap from the table, and, in a
flash, flowers, bottles, and siphons, china, glass, and silver were
spirited away, the cloth whisked off, chairs set against the wall. As
the dining-room door closed on the flying skirt of the last guest, the
cook looked out of the window, the horn sounded again, and the motor was
round the corner in the next street, for it was somebody else's, and the
literary family did not return until Monday.
The Socialist, who deals in paradox and the inconsequent, also has his
own car. Now that Socialism is knocking at our doors, the car tooting at
his, come to fetch him from his town house to his country house or off
to the uttermost ends of the earth, toots reassurance into our hearts.
Under such conditions we should not mind being Socialists ourselves.
However, he does make one protest against Individualism in which I
should not care to join him, for he goes shares in his personality and
has perpetrated a double in the Quarter,--a long lean man, with grizzled
red hair and beard, who is clothed in brown Jaegers, whose face has the
pallor of the vegetarian, and who warns us of the manner of equality we
may expect under the Socialist's regime. I dread to think of the
complications there might be were the double not so considerate as to
carry a black bag and wear knee-breeches. A glance at hands and legs
enables us to distinguish one from the other and to spare both the
inconvenience of a mistaken identity. The double, like the old men
opposite, remains one of the mysteries of the Quarter. Nobody can
explain his presence in our midst, nobody has ever spoken to him, nobody
can say where he comes from with his black bag in the morning, where he
goes with it in the evening, or even where he stops in the Quarter. I
doubt if the Socialist has yet, like the lovers in Rossetti's picture,
met himself, for surely no amount of Socialism could bear the shock of
the revelation that must come with the meeting.
If many books are written in the Quarter, more are published from it,
and the number increases at a rate that is fast turning it into a new
Paternoster Row. I am surrounded by publishers: publishers who are
unknown outside our precincts, and publishers who are unknown in them
save for the names on their signs; publishers who issue limited editions
for the few, and publishers who apparently publish for nobody but
themselves; and, just where I can keep an eye on his front door, _the_
Publisher, my friend, who makes the Quarter a centre of travel and a
household word wherever books are read, and uses his house as a
training-school for young genius. More than one lion now roaring in
London served an apprenticeship there; even Mr. Chatteron passed through
it; and I am always encountering minor poets or budding philosophers
going in or coming out, ostensibly on the Publisher's affairs, but
really busy carrying on the Quarter's traditions and preparing more
memorial tablets for its overladen walls. The Publisher and his wife
live a few doors away, where they are generously accumulating fresh
associations and memories for our successors in the Quarter. To keep
open house for the literary men and women of the time is a fashion among
publishers that did not go out with the Dillys and the Dodsleys, and an
occasional Boswell would find a note-book handy behind the windows that
open upon the river from the Publisher's chambers.
Associations are being accumulated also by the New York Publisher, who,
accompanied by his son, the Young Publisher, and by his birds, arrives
every year with the first breath of spring. It is chiefly to artists
that his house is open, though he gives the literary hallmark to the
legacy of memories he will leave to the Quarter. I cannot understand why
the artist, to whom our streets and our houses make a more eloquent
appeal than to the author, has seldom been attracted to them since the
days when Barry designed his decorations in the "grand manner" for our
oldest Society's lecture-hall, and Angelica Kauffmann painted the
ceiling in Peter the Great's house, or since the later days when Etty
and Stanfield lived in our house. Now and then I come across somebody
sketching our old Watergate or our shabby little shops and corners, but
only the youth in the attic below has followed the example given by J.,
whose studio continues the exception in the Quarter: the show-place it
ought to be for the beauty of river and sky framed in by the windows.
But to make up for this neglect, as long a succession of artists as used
to climb to Etty's chambers visit the New York Publisher in the quiet
rooms with the prints on the walls and the windows that, for greater
quiet, look away from our quiet streets and out upon our quieter backs
and gables. Much good talk is heard there, and many good stories, and by
no means the least good from the New York Publisher himself. It is
strange that, loving quiet as he does, he should, after the British
Dramatist, have contributed more to my disquiet than anybody in the
Quarter: a confession for which I know he will think I merit his scorn.
But the birds it is his fancy to travel with are monsters compared to
the sparrows and pigeons who build their nests in the peaceful trees of
the Quarter, and I am never at ease in their company. I still tremble
when I recall the cold critical eye and threatening beak of his
favourite magpie, nor can I think calmly of his raven whom, in an access
of mistaken hospitality, I once invited to call with him upon William
Penn. William had never seen a live bird so near him in his all too
short life, and what with his surprise and curiosity, his terror and
sporting instincts, he was so wrought up and his nerves in such a state
that, although the raven was shut up safe in a cage, I was half afraid
he would not survive the visit. I have heard the New York Publisher say
of William, in his less nervous and more normal moments, that he was not
a cat but a demon; the raven, in my opinion, was not exactly an angel.
But thanks to the quality of our friendship, it also survived the visit
and, in spite of monstrous birds, strengthens with the years.