The only place where you could sell an elephant, a were-wolf, or your
second best aunt without attracting the slightest curiosity is Club
Row, a Sunday market famous throughout the eastern regions of London.
Turn out of Shoreditch along the Bethnal Green Road and presently you
see a large cloth-capped crowd. You approach.
A dramatic, sinister man who lost his razor early last year detaches
himself and sidles up to you with his right hand suspiciously hidden
in the breast of his coat. Is he an anarchist? Just as you expect
him to bring out a bomb and cry "Down with Civilization," he quickly
produces a six-ounce pom and whispers in a voice like a rusty door
hinge: "Come on, half a dollar!" Other dog men approach. They offer
handfuls of pups, or they submit dogs of larger growth which sit
round in a circle looking up at you questioningly, hopefully. You
want to buy the lot. Then an Airedale bites a collie and you find
yourself the centre of a splendid battle, from which you escape into
the heart of the mob.
Here life is magnificent. Thousands of things are happening at once
in Oriental variety. This is what Bagdad was like in the days of the
Caliph. This is what the Mouski in Cairo is like to-day. As you
stand wedged between people who hold sacks that writhe and cluck, a
man waves a couple of buff Orpingtons in your face and pushes past to
stand himself a glass of jellied eels. An elderly parrot-like old
lady is marooned helplessly, with a green aloof-looking parrot,
exactly like herself, perched on her hand. Pigeons coo, hens cackle,
cockerels crow, dogs bark, canaries sing, and you gain the impression
that anything--anything--is yours for "half a dollar."
I was interested in the little groups round contortionists,
catch-penny men, and herb doctors. We have driven these mediæval
characters from more polite places, and it is almost with a thrill
that east of Aldgate Pump you find yourself in the hearty atmosphere
of a fair as old as England. One man, who said that his face was as
well known as the dome of St. Paul's, walked rapidly up and down with
a mysterious paper packet over which he held a pair of dental
forceps. Every one wanted to see what marvellous thing he would pick
out of the packet at the psychological moment. All the time as he
walked backwards and forwards he talked, of indigestion and other
things with Elizabethan frankness. He discussed food as if it were a
revolver.
"If the steak repeats, if the onions repeat, if the pudding repeats,
if cheese repeats...."
Then, working up to his climax, he dived the forceps into the packet
and produced a beautiful heliotrope-coloured pill!
Did he sell any? He did!
Under a railway arch a young man with a faint Scottish accent had
been handcuffed and chained. Round his neck he wore a steel collar;
on his head a steel cap which, he said, was "an exact replica of the
cap used for capital punishment throughout the United States of
America." (Thrill in the audience!)
"And now," he remarked (with a touch of his Scottish accent), "before
I release myself, my partner will take the liberty of passing the hat
round!"
The fringes of the crowd melted away. After a prolonged struggle,
interrupted by a donkey and cart bursting violently into the arena,
the young man unshackled himself, dived for the hat, looked at the
pennies, and remarked, "Well, now; if any sportsman would care...."
But the crowd had stampeded.
How delightfully childish it all is. In order to sell chocolate one
man had taken off his coat and had put on his head an irresponsible
looking opera hat!
In side streets I came on a bicycle market. I wondered how many were
doped like racehorses. A stray bicycle found carelessly outside a
house becomes something quite different with the aid of a paint pot!
How many old crocks had been dressed up with new lamps and saddles I
would not care to say! Here trade was booming. I saw a man who had
bought a dog, a birdcage, and a pair of pink braces, treat himself to
a pair of handle-bars. It must be wonderful to wander through Bagdad
like this, meeting things on the way, living an hour full of infinite
possibilities, not knowing whether you will arrive home with a
bullfinch or a bicycle! After watching this market closely I realize
this: people do not go there to buy things, but to have things sold
to them!
* * *
On the way out I saw something worth while. A melancholy bull pup
sitting in the road with all the world's troubles in his eyes was
picked up by a little girl.
"I want him because he looks so unhappy."
A chauffeur in a green coat paid out five shillings.
"Darling ... darling," said the girl, holding the squat little body.
They took him to a motor-car that had been left round the corner. So
he left a street corner in Bagdad to be a prince among pups.
Kismet!
"Prisoners Only"
"Prisoners Only."
A door in Bow Street Police Station opens on a small tiled room in
which each morning all the prisoners on their way to the celebrated
dock gather to await the call.
It is an exclusive apartment. Visitors are not allowed. Unless you
break a shop window, punch a policeman in the stomach, or become
publicly full of spirit you will never see it. It was due only to
the courtesy of Bow Street that I was allowed in for a moment
yesterday like an ordinary prisoner. Here I found a strange
assortment of human beings gathered together by Fate--or should I say
alcohol?--for Monday morning's crime originates in a bottle!
The room is tiled and looks like an ordinary waiting-room till a
policeman opens the door that leads out to a courtyard and then you
see a second door composed of stout iron bars. About twenty or
thirty men were sitting round the room talking to the policemen who
had arrested them. Most of them were weary, some of those who had
been let out on bail looked smart, a few still retained traces of
their fateful debauch, and all had lost the divine afflatus which had
flung them into a pair of blue arms. The atmosphere was rather like
that of a headmaster's study in which is gathered a group of bad boys
waiting for the cane.
A stoical old man dozed peacefully in a corner. So might dear old
Falstaff have bared his grey hairs in a moment of regrettable trial.
A navvy with the head of a Roman emperor sat huddled in his
clay-soiled clothes, silent, grim. He reminded me of Trajan's bust
in the British Museum. He should have been dressed in a toga instead
of sitting in Bow Street with a fine of five shillings hanging over
him! A young man with a mild face sat near him, the kind of young
man who keeps rabbits in a back yard. I wondered what odd
circumstance had brought him in conflict with law and order. Among a
group of seedy and tattered people I noticed a smart man wearing
spats and holding a neat umbrella.
It was the strangest roomful you can imagine.
* * *
How wonderfully British! I do not imagine that the police and
prisoners of any other nation meet together as captor and captive in
the same cheery, almost social atmosphere.
In Berlin I imagine it must be exceedingly unpleasant to be a
prisoner, and in Paris, also, it cannot be exactly jolly. In Cologne
I once saw a German policeman draw his sword and charge a little boy
who had left a banana skin on a patch of neat, cultured turf; and in
Paris once I saw a gendarme do unnecessarily unfriendly things to his
captive. But our Roberts are not like this, and when they are face
to face with their prey in the station they seem almost apologetic
about it:
"You broke the law and I did my duty, and that's that. Let's forget
it!"
That is the atmosphere in the "Prisoners Only" room. Thumbs in
belts, the policemen talked with their prisoners about racing, the
weather, and, as far as I could gather, anything but drink and
brawls. What instinctive good breeding! Here and there a prisoner
who took his captivity lightly laughed and joked with the man who
brought him there.
"What'll I get?" one prisoner asked.
"Oh, about twenty years without option!" replied the constable. Then
a man with a notebook became busy with the day's evil-doers, a name
was called, and as the first prisoner pulled himself together and
strode out dockwards, a flutter of interest went round the
waiting-room, and the old man awakened with a start and asked where
he was.
* * *
Under the Royal Arms sat Sir Chartres Biron, white-haired and
exceedingly wise to human nature. He was dealing with a pathetic
collection of women prisoners who had been waiting in a "Prisoners
Only" room of their own. Constable after constable described scenes
of revelry in which it was alleged that certain inadequate Bacchantes
in black bonnets had been urged to deeds of violence.
Some women pleaded guilty and got it all over quickly. Others
clasped and unclasped their hands--appealing, thin, worn hands grimed
with work--and tried to impress Sir Chartres that "two glasses of
port" had been the cause of all their trouble. They were fined and
went their way, some with an assumption of belated dignity, others
jauntily. One old lady was so pleased with her sentence that she
danced down the corridor between two lines of policemen promising
never to look upon the wine again.
* * *
Then one by one my friends of the waiting-room came up for justice:
drunk and disorderly, drunk in charge of a motor-car, creating a
disturbance, using insulting language. They all looked sorry for
themselves and exceedingly foolish. Five deaf and dumb youths had,
it appeared, pushed a policeman off the pavement. The mother of one
of them interpreted the case, talked to them in baby language, asked
them if they had really "banged" the policeman. They nodded their
heads and tried to speak, but only vague, tortured sounds,
heart-rending to hear, came from their mouths. They filed out, bound
over.
Then Cæsar strode into the dock, said he had been drunk, accepted his
fine without a trace of emotion, and walked from the dock with an
invisible cohort before him and--a visible bottle sticking out of his
coat-tails!
* * *
When he has done his day's work does Sir Chartres Biron feel more
like laughing or crying, I wonder?