MY LIFE IN BRIXTON
Our Anglo-Japanese home at 151 Brixton Road was an ordinary boarding
house occupied by an old couple and one step-daughter. Jennings and I
engaged one bed-room and one sitting-room, where I used to work all day.
About ten or eleven lodgers were staying. Most of them were students for
chemists, and commercial travelers. There was one law student called
Beven, a quite young and bright fellow, with much ability. Lately I
heard he is getting on splendidly as a solicitor somewhere about
Tottenham. He and I became great friends, and I used to call him
“Scientific Liar,” and he called me “Mock British Lion.”
It was this time Mr. Grant Richard published my “Little Japanese Dumpy
Book.” The weekly magazine _King_ took several sketches of mine. But
luck did not smile upon me regularly. One day Jennings and I noticed
that the landlady “turned out” one lodger because he could not pay
regularly. We looked at each other’s eyes rather seriously. Jennings
said, “Never mind, if you could not pay I shall pay that for you.” I
think he did so for a few weeks. Sometimes publishers accepted my works
but never published. More seldom my pictures were published, but not
paid. Beven told me that I ought to make the contract each time. “In
England,” he said, “it is the only way. And if it is in black and white
it is quite safe.” But whenever I saw a new person he looked to me so
gentle and so kind-hearted, and every time I thought, “Oh no, this
gentleman would never cheat me,” and I worked without contract, only to
repent afterwards. Beven thought I was most “hopeless, foolish fellow
for business” he has ever seen.
I got into a heavy debt with the landlady again. I was so frightened
that she might turn me out every minute. But to my surprise (and
delight, too) she said to me, “Oh no, we shan’t turn you out; your case
is quite different from the other. I know those wealthy peoples never
pay you properly, but never mind, we shall always feed you well.”
Unfortunately this kind-hearted old woman died in a few months, and the
peoples of this house asked all the lodgers to have meals out until they
were quite settled down. I understood they were almost broken-hearted
and could not manage our meals every day. Jennings felt so
inconvenienced about that, and he removed some other house, but I myself
was quite penniless and had some debts, so I could not remove. I took
only one small bed-room on the top floor. A chemist student, one of the
lodgers, was very kind to me. He used to take my pictures to the City,
and sold one or two for me. It was this time he sold my wooden figure
for me too.
But that was not enough, and I began to be a hermit again. Day after day
I had to go to bed without any meal. This time I got a little bad
impression with some English business peoples, because if they only were
honest enough to pay me what they promised I need not suffer this
starvation. Indeed I had far more credit than my actual debts. I still
keep my diary of this time. On one of its pages I find this passage:”
... did not send me the cheque to-day again. What dirty commercial
spirits they have in their heads! Money to these people is just like
fishes to cats. I do hate these merchant spirits. It doesn’t matter to
me, after all, whether I get two pounds or twenty pounds. If I get more
I only spend more to please other peoples. Money does not affect me
enough to hate this world, but just imagine those dirty merchant
spirits! This dirty feeling perishes all good friendship. I suppose
everywhere in this world is just same. So I have not much hope to live
in this world now. Damn the dirty wicked world! What use to live in such
a place--Devil’s Den. I am not very hard on individuality, because it is
their own weakness after all. But how pity they cannot cure their most
incurable hereditary illness.”
But another page of this diary says, “Went to the National Gallery and
spent a whole morning there. I saw many peoples inside. They all were so
humble before those old masterpieces. Who knows if they were same sorts
of peoples with those who are treating me worse than their dogs. Perhaps
they themselves might be those dirty commercial peoples. But in front of
the masterpieces they behave themselves so nicely. Very well then, very
well. I shall make a “masterpiece” some day and let all those dirty
commercials kneel down in front of me! It is all through my faults that
I should be treated like this now because my Art is not good enough
_now_. But some day, yes, some day....”
At this very moment I got a letter from my elder sister in Japan. She is
thirteen years older than myself and I was her pet at home. In her
letter, she expressed that she began to feel that her young age was
nearly gone by, and she was so lonely that she was thinking of me more
than ever. She dreaded to be awake with her dream at midnight that I was
dead; and she wished so much to see me just once more, because when I
ran away to America from Tokio, I did not go back home to say good-bye
to her. “And,” she continued, “if it is impossible for you to come back
now, please let me hear some bright news, and don’t forget to send me
your photo, too!”
I never wrote her about my hard life, as I was afraid it would upset
her. But she began to be alarmed with my long silence. Her letter was
only a dagger to my heart. How fortunate that my sister did not see me
borrowing 2½d. from my English friend for the post stamp which I put on
my answering letter.
My answer to her was quite simple--a Japanese poetry in four lines:--
“The lofty summit of the mountain is almost in sight,
But the road around the precipice is too much curved.
You must, I understand, be tired of waiting a long, long age,
Though I, myself, am climbing incessantly all this time,
without rest.”
I was then such an ambitious boy, and I wanted “name” in vain. I used to
write all what I felt in my note-book. It says, “London is such a large
town. It is really too large. Something like a big ship. I cannot move
it with my strength.” I remember when I was a boy I went to a sea shore
and saw a large European boat. It was the first time in my life to see
such a large ship. I got up to the top of the cabin. I wanted to jump on
the deck, but I was afraid I might make such a noise, as I often made in
the schoolroom when I jumped from the desk to the floor, and that I
might shake the whole boat, then the Captain would be angry with me. But
at last I decided to jump on the deck. Why, such a hard deck! I made no
shaking, only I hurted my feet so much.
“Now in London, if I try to make sound with London, London does not
sound at all, only I hurt myself. That is all.”
It was only just a few weeks ago (Nov. 1909) that I received a most
flattering letter from my most intimate friend: “Be courageous, Markino,
London had begun to move a little by your brush.” Alas, I am grown up
and no more a boy slave of “fame.” My present ambition is only to
improve my art. Any favorable or unfavorable criticisms are no account
to me. Only nice subject and nice composition are my real delight.
Well, getting back to my Brixton life. The King’s Coronation Day was
coming. Mr. Gordon Home, the editor of _The King_, commissioned me to
make four sketches--two naval reviews seen from a Japanese cruiser and
two processions in London Streets. That meant some twenty pounds--a
great fortune for me then! But all my delight was robbed by the King’s
illness. I had pain as if I myself were operated!
I think I concealed all my misery fairly well before the public. For at
my starving time I called on _Harper’s Magazine_ at Albemarle Street
several times. The manager said, “You must be getting on quite
prosperous. You look always so happy.” How lucky he had no X-ray
apparatus to see my empty stomach! He was, anyhow, very kind to
introduce me to a French lady artist, who had a studio in Hammersmith.
She gave me some jobs to paint some Geisha’s portrait on the cloth cover
for portfolios. I was paid half-crown each and I could paint two every
day. This job continued for a few months, and my diggings began to serve
the lodgers full meal, too.
One of these evenings my landlord came into my room and said, “A
Japanese gentleman come to see you, sir.” I opened my door and I heard
voice downstairs: “O’yi Markino! Bokuda, Bokuda!” (“It is I, it is I!”)
I shouted, “Who are you; whose name is ‘I’?”
The next second I met him on the middle of stairs. It was my dear
Japanese poet friend, Yone Noguchi! He told me he had just arrived from
New York to Queen’s Hotel in Leicester Square. He removed to my address
immediately, and had a room just downstairs of mine.
For the first few nights, naturally, I was so busy to ask him about my
friends in Japan as well as in America, then we began to talk each
other’s experiences since we were parted. He had a little better opinion
on America, because he spent most part of his time in Washington and New
York, where the Japanese were not so much hated as in California. He
used to say English peoples are so slow, and he called me a cow, because
my temperament was “so slow” too.
“Markino,” he often exclaimed, “you are getting too English altogether.”
But one day he received a letter from his worshiped friend, Mr. Charles
Warren Stadard. It ran something like this:--
“Yes, my dear Yone, you may think English people are very slow; you may
not like them now. But be patient and stay there a little longer. Some
day you will find out something at the bottom of English people’s
hearts--some gentleness, some sweetness, which other nations seldom
have. When you have once recognized this you will never forget it all
your life.”
Yone was a very sharp observer. It did not take long time that he fell
into love with the English peoples. Indeed, after only four months’ stay
in London when I went to see him off at Paddington Station I saw his
eyes were much inflammated with tears. He peeped out from the train
window and said to me, “I am sure I shall come back to England. Yes, I
must come back again. I promise you faithfully. So you wait here until I
come? Markino, you are a lucky fellow to stay in Sweet London all the
time.”
Yone’s four-month visit to London was my great comfort. We both had
something nobler and sweeter than anything which one can get with money.
Although I was meeting great sympathy of those landladies wherever I
went, my art was suffering a great deal through their ignorance. Now
Yone was my complement. It was this time that he told the story of
Keats, which I wrote in my essay of “The Color of Rome.” Yone used to
sit on a chair in front of the fire-place stretching his two feet high
above the mantel-piece, drooping his head on his chest and grasping his
two hands together on his back. Whenever I came back into the room it
was my great delight to see this peculiar pose of his.
We two often had walk along the Victoria and Albert Embankment in nights
to enjoy London fogs. I remember he made many poetries about London
Mists. I wonder if he ever published them. Yone thought the English
publishers were “too slow” for the publication of his works, so he
decided to publish them himself. We saw the advertisements of those job
printers, and found out the one at Kennington was the fairest. Yone
ordered him to print some two or three hundred copies of his few
poetries on brown paper. It was about sixteen pages, entitled, “From the
Eastern Sea,” by Yone Noguchi, a Japanese. Price two shillings. A
messenger came from that printing-office to see Yone especially about
the lettering of the price. He asked Yone again and again to assure that
it was really two shillings and not two pence! Yone gave him positive
answer. After the messenger was gone Yone told me that the messenger
looked into his face so seriously to find out if Yone’s head was “a bit
off,” and we laughed so much until our landlord’s dog began to bark at
us!
I think it was about the evening of February 13, 1903, Yone and I went
to the printing-office, and a few hundred copies of “From the Eastern
Sea” were ready, so we carried them home. It was such a cold night and
my hands had no feeling at all. Then the pavement was quite frozen, and
it was so slippery and almost impossible to walk with my worn-out boots.
Yone warned me not throw them on the mud because he could not afford to
print them again.
On the same night Yone sent more than half to some important literary
people and newspapers. Every one of them welcomed this little brown book
(pamphlet, rather), but one of them (I think it was Mr. William
Rossetti) wrote Yone kindly enough to warn him that unless he obeyed the
regulations of Publishing Law he would be punished. We both were so
frightened, and next day we went to Somerset House and registered his
name and sent copy each to the British Museum, Oxford, and Cambridge.
Many people came to buy Yone’s book. About business matter he was as bad
as myself. He could not ask the payment. He presented each copy to
everybody who came to buy. One evening he said to me, “I cannot afford
to present all my book.”
I said, “Of course you cannot; why don’t you ask them the payment?”
“But, Markino, just think how could I ask two shillings for this,
although I put on that price?”
While we were talking a very young fellow came to buy Yone’s book. It
was Arthur Ransome (he was only seventeen or eighteen then). I told
Ransome that Yone wanted two shillings a copy. Ransome was willing to
pay. Yone shouted, “No, Markino. It is ‘lie!’ it is ‘lie!’” and ran out
of the room. However, Ransome insisted to leave two shillings. We
decided to buy some cigarettes, and when Ransome came we three should
enjoy the smoking. Afterwards I learnt that Ransome was as poor as we
were then.
Soon after this the _Unicorn Press_ wanted to publish a more “elaborate”
edition, and I made a design for the book-cover--many Japanese boats
loaded with parchment sailing forward, and each sail had Yone’s family
crest. My original design was dark indigo on bluish-grey ground. Yone
liked it very much. But to our great disappointment the publishers
[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER.]
printed it vermillion on cream ground--to make it more “effective.” I
said, “Effective? Indeed, it is effective enough to make us sick!
Commercial elaboration means our Hell!”
I think Yone made several nice friends here, in whose heads he is still
well remembered for evermore. But he had gone so soon. I not only missed
him so much, but began to sink into the financial difficulty again.
Perhaps it was worse than ever. My debts for the landlord were getting
higher and still higher. I had less courage to try and sell my pictures
this time, because it was so difficult to get payment after “accepted,”
and I could not try same places again.
It was one of these days I was walking near Hyde Park Corner, I felt
something on my chest, somebody was striking me with his stick. It was
Ukida Goji, a Japanese Chancellor. He said to me, “Here, here, are you
still living?”
I was not clever enough to answer such a difficult question, so I passed
on in silence. The day-time I was so busy to try some publisher, but
when I went to bed at night I began to recollect those words, “Are you
still living?” I could not understand why should I be so insulted like
that, only because I was poor! My pillow case was quite wet with my
tears. Really, I need not take him so seriously, as he was only an
insignificant chancellor!