THE WAYS OF LONDONERS
"Laughing, weeping, hurrying ever,
Hour by hour they crowd along,
While below the mighty river
Sings them all a mocking song."--_Molloy._
"An ever-muttering prisoned storm,
The heart of London beating warm."--_John Davidson._
[Illustration: _'Bus Driver._]
What is the best way to see London? "From the top of a 'bus," Mr.
Gladstone is said to have sagely remarked. And if you can study London
itself from the top of a 'bus, you can also, from the interior of the
same convenient, if not always savoury, vehicle, study the ways of
Londoners. For, as means of transit, omnibuses and road-cars are every
decade, nay, every year, coming yet more into popularity. Soon the
patient horses that drag them will disappear and they will transform
themselves into "motor-omnibuses," but their general character will be
still unaltered. Whether the new electric railway along Oxford Street
will at all affect the omnibus public, is a question to be considered;
but up to now these popular vehicles have certainly had it all their
own way. To the unsophisticated, there seems now even a dash of
adventure about them. Why, it is only some twenty years since it was
considered bold for a young woman to venture into that hitherto
exclusively male precinct, the very select "knifeboard": and now, the
top of a 'bus usually harbours not one, but a majority of females,
while the uncomfortable "knifeboard" itself has given place to the
luxurious "garden-seat." Then, it was in old days considered
necessary to talk of "omnibuses," and now, 'bus is a term as common as
"the Zoo," and used not only by "the masses," but even by purists in
the English language.
The ways of Londoners, then, as studied in the ubiquitous "'bus," are
not at all the ways of any other people. To begin with, the stranger
should be warned of the fact that the average Londoner resents being
spoken to. He, or she, regards it as an unwarrantable liberty. For the
Londoner,--at any rate that Londoner whose honour it is to belong to
the great and respectable "middle class," prides himself on "keeping
'isself _to_ 'isself." He, or, again, it is generally she,--is nothing
if not conventional, and dreads nothing in life so much as the
unexpected. If, therefore, you should show such bad taste as to
suddenly die in the 'bus, or in the street, a dirty crowd would, it is
true, soon collect round you, but the more respectable would, like the
Levite, "pass by on the other side," preferring "not to mix themselves
up with any unpleasantness." "People in London are so rude," I
remarked once sadly to a "lady friend" of mine who lived in a "two
pair back" in a select mews: "Wyever _do_ you speak to 'em?" was her
retort--evidently on the principle that you can't expect anything from
a wolf but a bite.
But the lowest classes are more genial. They have not got such an
overpowering amount of gentility to keep up. They can even afford to
be sympathetic. Once I happened to have to ring up a doctor in the
small hours of the morning. Hardly had I pulled twice at the midnight
bell, when with Gamp-like alacrity two strange figures hurried up, and
inquired with breathless anxiety, "Anyone pizened, Miss?" adding, with
knowledge born of experience, "Knock at the winder." The advice was at
all events opportune. Yes, the very poor have always a certain rude,
Dickensian, good nature. Thus, if an old market-woman, for instance,
happen to jump into your 'bus at Covent Garden, she will amiably rest
her big (and distinctly savoury) basket half on your knees, and,
mopping her crimson face with a dishcloth, "pass" you the time of day.
On the other hand, a great lady and her fashionably dressed daughter
will (if you happen to offer your own place for their acceptance) take
it without so much as "thank you," and will then proceed to eye you
superciliously through a lorgnette. Truly, our manners do not improve,
in all respects, with our social status.
Max O'Rell, in _John Bull and his Island_, has well hit off the
Englishman's little ways when travelling by omnibus:
"Ask John Bull if you are in the right for such and such a
place; you will get _yes_ or _no_ for an answer, and nothing
more. When he enters an omnibus or a railway carriage, if he
does not recognise any one, he eyes his fellow travellers
askance in a sulky and suspicious way. He seems to say,
'What a bore it is that all you people can't walk home, and
let a man have the carriage comfortably to himself....'
London omnibuses are made to seat six persons on each side.
These places are not marked out. When, on entering, you find
five people on either hand, you must not hope to see any one
move to make room for you. No, here everything is left to
personal initiative. You simply try to spy out the two pairs
of thighs that seem to you the best padded, and with all
your weight you let yourself down between them. No need to
apologise, no one will think of calling you a bad name."
There is much character to be met with in a 'bus. The incipient or
embryo novelist should be encouraged to travel by them. From the time
when the poet Shelley frightened the Highgate old lady in a 'bus, by
his odd invitation to:
"sit upon the ground,
And tell strange stories of the death of kings...."
--many romances have been enacted, many curious histories related in
them. Omnibuses have before now been utilised as meeting-grounds for
young couples whose courtship was tabooed by unkind parents, and who
consequently discovered pressing engagements requiring their presence
at "Hercules Buildings," or "the Elephant," as the case might be. Mr.
Anstey Guthrie's amusing conversations, overheard in the 'bus, and
his intense anxiety as to the never discovered _denoument_ of the
thrilling story about "the button-hook as opened George's eyes," we
have all known and laughed over. But the omnibus,--mere comedy on a
bright, dusty, spring or summer day, when its garden-seats shine
resplendent in new paint, becomes rather a thing of grim tragedy on
muddy days of winter gloom, when the rain comes down in torrents, and
a stern "Full inside," is all the response the weary wayfarer gets
after waiting long minutes,--painful, jostled minutes,--for the
desired vehicle, of which, as Calverley says:
"... some, like monarchs, glow
With richest purple; some are blue
As skies that tempt the swallows back.
Or red as, seen o'er wintry seas,
The star of storm; or barred with black
And yellow, like the April bees."
The omnibus conductors are generally uncommunicative, and often
morose--perhaps, from too frequent digs in the ribs from fussy old
ladies and choleric old gentlemen. Some of them, too, refuse to wait
for you unless you pretend to have a broken leg, or at least to be
half-paralyzed; yet, even among 'bus conductors, there are still
occasional pearls to be met with. In one thing they show remarkable
aptitude; namely, in an interchange of wit with the drivers of rival
vehicles. On these occasions their sallies, considering their very
limited vocabulary, are often quite brilliantly forcible. In a "block"
in Oxford Street or the Strand, or after a "liquor-up" at a convenient
"pub," such flights of humour will often while away the time very
agreeably for the passenger inside, that is, if he be not too
nervously fearful of being drawn into the dispute himself. Omnibus
conductors, however, "frivel" as they may among themselves, are as
adamant where any infringement of their rules by their passengers is
concerned. Why they continually insist--against all show of reason
too--on seating no less than six fat people on one side of their
vehicle, and no more than six thin ones on the other, has always been
a mystery to me. It is, however, as a law of the Medes and Persians,
for it knows no alteration. But it has at any rate the merit of
pointing the parable about the fat and the lean kine.
[Illustration: _Inside._]
Fat people, it must be confessed, have a peculiar affinity for
omnibuses. The contents of a 'bus are, I have observed, nearly always
fat. An omnibus journey is, by the obese, regarded as so much
exercise. An old tradesman of my acquaintance who suffered from liver
was lately ordered exercise by his doctor. Thereupon he took, like
Mrs. Carlyle, one sad shilling's worth of omnibus per day, and was
surprised when, at the end of a month, he felt no better. "One
shilling's worth of omnibus!"--horrible suggestion! It must have taken
nearly three hours, for the cost of omnibus journeys can generally be
reckoned at a penny for every ten minutes. The distance traversed is
immaterial, as the traveller will soon discover. If he wishes to catch
any particular train he had better allow twenty minutes a mile to be
quite on the safe side.
On rainy days, character in omnibus is yet more self-revealing. Thus,
a wayfarer gets in with a wet cloak and wet umbrella; no one shows any
desire to make room. The five lean kine on the one side spread
themselves out; the five fat ones on the other expand also. The
new-comer stumbles, the wet cloak splashes every one, the umbrella
drips genially; it is a pleasant sight. When room is finally made and
the wanderer seated, the wet garments soon exhale a fragrant
steam--which scent mingles with the odours of cabbage, peppermint, or
onions, already discernible. These scents, it may be added, vary in
different quarters of London. Thus, onions are partial to Long Acre;
antiseptics to Southampton Row; cheap scent to Oxford Street and
Holborn; whisky, perhaps, to "the 'Ampstid Road"; general frowsiness
to King's Road, Chelsea; and the aroma of elegant furs to the shades
of Kensington. Omnibus scents vary, too, with "the varying year." In
the spring it is leeks and "spring onions"; in the winter it is
paraffin or eucalyptus; in the summer it is indescribable.
Yet, it must be said on behalf of human nature, that there is kindness
to be met with even in the maligned 'bus. If, for instance, some
"absent-minded beggar" should happen to get in without possessing the
necessary pence, at least half the 'bus are immediately ready to offer
the deficit; and hands are similarly always stretched out to help in
the lame and the blind.
[Illustration: _"Benk, Benk!!"_]
Even should a fellow passenger be exceptionally conversational, it
does not, I may add, usually answer to talk much to the casual
neighbour on a 'bus, even if it be by way of ingratiating yourself
with "the masses." Especially does this rule hold good where young
women are concerned. A seriously-minded girl--a girl, too, who was not
a bit of a flirt, or indeed remarkably pretty--once confessed to me
her sad experiences in that line. Being much interested in democratic
politics, she had one fine day begun to talk--on the 'bus roof--to a
young artisan on the "Eight Hours' Bill." She imagined herself to be
getting along swimmingly, when suddenly the young man, hitherto very
intelligent and respectful, began to "nudge" her (this being, I have
reason to believe, the first preliminary to courtship in his class).
From "nudging" he proceeded to "squeezing"; and, finally, could it be
fancy, or was it an arm that began ominously to encircle her waist?
She did not stay to investigate the phenomenon, but clambered down the
iron staircase with inelegant haste--a sadder and a wiser young woman!
Another time I myself was "riding," as the Cockneys term it, on the
outside of a 'bus towards the sylvan park of Kennington, and, fired no
doubt by the lovely summer day, began--with more enthusiasm than
prudence--to discuss current topics with my neighbour on the "garden
seat." He was a well-mannered youth, and for a while I was much
edified by his conversation--until, that is, his sudden interjection
of "There's a taisty 'at a-crawsin' of the rowd," in some inexplicable
manner cooled me off.
Carlyle was a constant traveller by 'bus, which economy, it may be,
agreed well with his Scotch thriftiness. Mrs. Carlyle, on one of her
solitary returns to their Chelsea home, describes him as meeting her
by the omnibus, scanning the passengers (like the Peri at the gate)
from under his well-known old white hat. This white hat, even in
Carlyle's day, used to attract attention. "Queer 'at the old gent
wears," once remarked an unconsciously irreverent passenger to the
conductor of the Chelsea omnibus. "Queer 'at," retorted the conductor
reprovingly; "it may be a queer 'at, but what would you give for the
'ed-piece that's inside of it?"
Cabs are vastly more luxurious than omnibuses, but are to be rigidly
eschewed by the economical, except in cases where time is of as much
value as money. The fact is, that it is almost necessary to overpay
cabmen, and especially so if the "fare" be at all nervous. Hence it
has been said with some truth, that life, to be at all worth living in
London, should disregard extra sixpences. People of the Jonas
Chuzzlewit type may, indeed, take cabs to their utmost shilling
limits, but this is a proceeding hardly to be recommended to the
sensitive. For the average cabman is prodigal in retort, and not
generally reticent on the subject of imagined wrong. In the season
overpaying is more than ever necessary, while hiring "by the hour" is,
at least by the nervous, to be deprecated. The familiar device of
paying one penny per minute, though fair enough in fact, has been
characterised as "only possible to the hardened Londoner." Some people
make a practice of only overpaying the cabman when, like John Gilpin,
they are "on pleasure bent"; yet I do not know how the cabman is
supposed to divine their mission.
The hansom--"the gondola of London," as Disraeli called it--is far
preferable to the antiquated "four-wheeler" or "growler," a vehicle
which has never been really popular since Wainwright murdered Harriet
Lane, and inconsiderately carried about her mutilated body in one of
these conveyances, tied up in American cloth. True, hansoms have their
faults. Thus the hansom horse is sometimes afflicted with a mania for
going round and round in a manner which suggests his having been
brought up in a circus. Sometimes he does nothing but twist his head
back to look at his fare; sometimes he persists on turning into every
"mews" he passes; sometimes he jibs in a way altogether distracting to
a nervous passenger who can only, for the moment, behold the horse and
the driver; but still there is a "smartness" about the well-turned-out
hansom that cannot be gainsaid. The acme of smartness is, perhaps, a
private hansom with a liveried driver; these, however, are
exclusively seen in the haunts of fashion. It is, perhaps, well for
the London resident to be liberally inclined, for in an incredibly
short space of time his or her "ways" become known to the cab-driving
community, and facilities for getting cabs largely depend on their
verdict. It may be added that if the hansom-driver is inclined to be
pert (a natural inclination, considering the height of his elevation
above the general public), more generally the "growler" is morose, and
given to a huskiness that is suggestive of that abode of light and
polished brass--the "poor man's club."
[Illustration: _The Hansom._]
The visitors to London vary, like the omnibus scents, with the varying
year. In the spring and early summer, it is the fashionable world that
mainly haunts its streets; in the later summer, the French, Italians,
Germans--especially Germans--flock with everlasting red Baedekers
(indeed, in the London streets in August, you but rarely hear your own
language spoken); in autumn, it is chiefly Americans who abound,
provided with all "Europe" in the compass of one guide-book; in
January the country cousins, and thrifty housewives generally, come up
for the day, armed with lists of alarming length, to swell the crowds
at the winter sales.
One of the things that strikes the foreigner, new to England and
England's ways, most in London, is the regulation of the street
traffic. The innumerable vehicles that throng the highways of London,
every moment threatening, or seeming to threaten, a "block"; the
continuous rumble of many wheels,--omnibuses, cabs, drays, vans,
bicycles, motors,--all these, an apparently limitless force, are
stopped, as if by magic, by "the man in blue" simply holding up an
arm. All power, for the moment, is vested in him; he is here the one
authority against which there is no appeal. Under the protection of
the policeman's aegis, the most timid foot-passenger may pass in
perfect security; the flood will be stayed while his arm, like that of
Moses of old, is raised. And there is no such thing as disobedience.
Be the bicyclist never so bold, be the hansom-driver never so smart,
woe betide him if he disobey the mandate! Under the policeman's
faithful pilotage, the big crossings are safe; danger only lurks in
the smaller ones, where his presence is not felt. The "man in blue"
is, generally, a charming and urbane personage; if, in the exercise of
his calling, he sometimes chance to develop a certain curtness, it is,
perhaps, that he has in his time been overmuch badgered.... His
urbanity, as a rule, is marvellous; and in great contrast to that of
his continental brethren. In Germany, the officer of the law shakes
his list in people's faces; in France, he gesticulates wildly; in
Italy, he is timid and ineffectual; in England, he merely raises his
arm, and behold! like the gods on Olympus, he is obeyed.
Londoners are a curiously callous race, and are, as has been shown,
remarkably little interested in their neighbours. The fact is, their
life is much too busy for such interest. In the country, your
neighbours know everything you do, your business, your position, your
income even. In London, all that your neighbours know of you is that
you come and that you go; and, once gone, your place knows you no
more. Miss Amy Levy, who, more than any other poet, has expressed the
feeling of London streets, puts the idea well, in these most pathetic
lines:
"They trod the streets and squares where now I tread,
With weary hearts, a little while ago;
When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow
Clung to the leafless branches overhead;
Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red
In autumn; with a re-arisen woe
Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow;
And paced scorched stones in summer;--they are dead.
"The sorrow of their souls to them did seem
As real as mine to me, as permanent.
To-day, it is the shadow of a dream,
The half-forgotten breath of breezes spent.
So shall another soothe his woe supreme--
No more he comes, who this way came and went."
(_A London Plane-Tree._)
The Londoner dies--the great bell of St. Pancras may toll out his
sixty years, or the deep tones of Westminster call to his memorial
service; yet none the less a dance is given at the house next door,
and the immediate neighbours know not of the death until they see the
hearse and the long row of funereal trappings. Truly was it said, that
in a crowd is ever the greatest solitude! The mighty pulse of London,
that
"Of your coming and departure heeds,
As the Seven Seas may heed a pebble cast,"
beats on just the same though you are gone. The vast machine grinds
out its daily life, the propellers work, the wheels of Juggernaut
hum, while, like a poor moth, you spin your little hour in the sun,
and then go under. This terrible desolation of London has resulted,
and still results, in many a tragedy, bitter as that of young
Chatterton, the boy poet, found dead in a Brooke Street garret:
... "the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride...."
[Illustration: _A Doorstep Party._]
London, the "stony-hearted stepmother," as De Quincey called Oxford
Street--has many a time given her children stones for bread. Many are
the men and women, poets, authors, journalists, actors, who come up to
the vast city, attracted by "the deceitful lights of London," to
starve in Soho or Bloomsbury garrets (Bloomsbury, to which place, it
is said, more MSS. are returned than to any other locality in the
British Isles). Too proud to beg, too sensitive to fight, they soon
become ousted in the struggle for life, and very often get pushed
altogether out of the ranks; or, if they do succeed, are soured by
years of trial and suffering. The biographies of successful men
sometimes tell of such early struggles: but of the many who are not
successful, the submerged ones, you do not hear. Some of the
Bloomsbury and Bayswater boarding-houses afford sad evidence of
retrenched fortunes and squalid lives. The ragged window blind, the
dirty tablecloth, covered always with remains of meals; the sad,
lined, discontented faces pressed close to the dingy panes, the
eternal smell of onions or fried fish, the general wretchedness and
frowsiness of everything--all tell tales of a sadder kind than those
of Dickens's Mrs. Tibbs or Mrs. Todgers. And, descending yet lower in
the social scale, individual cases become yet sadder. I once lived in
a London square, next door to an empty house. For two days a battered
corpse lay on the other side of the wall, in the garden, and no one
knew of it. It was only the poor caretaker left in the "mansion" who,
weary of existence, had herself severed the Gordian knot of life. And,
in the immediate neighbourhood of another square of "desirable
residences," no less than three murders was considered the usual
winter average--murders, too, of the worst and most squalid type.
Such, in London, is the close juxtaposition of "velvet and rags,"
luxury and misery. London is the refuge of blighted lives, of the
queer flotsam and jetsam of humanity. Where can they all come from?
and what were their beginnings? Among such waifs and strays do I
recall one old man--feeble, pitiful, wizened, who carried an empty
black bag, and stretched it out towards me appealingly. The contents,
if any, of the black bag, I never discovered; but I often gave him a
penny, simply because he was so unutterably pathetic. He is gone now,
and his place knows him no more. But he always haunts my dreams. And
the afflicted girl--white-faced and expressionless--who sat for many
years close to the "Horse-Shoe" of Tottenham Court Road (indeed, she
may sit there still), her face calm as that of a Caryatid, as though
oblivious of Time and inured to suffering, through all the noise and
tumult of drovers' carts and omnibuses; she has often seemed to me as
a type of the eternal, dumb sorrow of humanity.
Yet this isolation of London, terrible as it is for the poor and
suffering,--is,--for the well-to-do class at least,--in some ways
advantageous. For one thing, it allows more liberty of action;--for
another, it prevents any undue personal pride. It is, fortunately,
rare indeed for the individual to be as conceited in London as he is
in the provinces. True,--London has occasional aesthetic crazes and
literary fashions; but, as a rule,--and with the exception of special
cliques and coteries such as those of Chelsea and Hampstead,--people
are not unduly puffed up in London. The city, with its vast size, acts
as an automatic equaliser;--personality becomes lost,--and individuals
tend to find their proper level. The Londoner is apt to
realise,--that, in the words of Mr. Gilbert's song,--"he never would
be missed." Nowhere is there more liberty; no one even notices you as
you walk the streets. A man used, some years ago, to walk about the
Bloomsbury squares with long hair in be-ribboned pigtails, and in a
harlequin dress; the street-boys hardly marked him; even a Chinaman in
full costume only attracts a following of a few nursery-maids and
perambulators. But in London it really matters very little what you
do, or how you dress. Dress here is in fact immaterial, unless you are
bent on social successes. Eyes are not for ever scanning you
critically, as they do in country villages. And, for ladies who work
in slums and "mean streets,"--the safest plan is always to wear dark,
shabby, and quiet clothes--clothes that do not "assert themselves."
Otherwise, it is likely that she may be accosted as "dear" or
"Sally,"--invited to take "a drop o' tea," or otherwise chaffed by
rough women standing akimbo at street doors. This practice of standing
at doors and gossiping would appear, indeed, to be the main occupation
of women of the lower class; but, poor things! they enjoy it; and
their life, after all, must contain but few enjoyments. It is perhaps,
less certain that their babies enjoy the "cold step," on which they
are unceremoniously flopped at all hours of the day. An overdose of
"cold step" may, indeed, partially account for the bronchitis which
riddles the ranks of the children of the poor. You may see a family of
six slum children playing happily in the damp gutter one week; the
week following, you may find half of them dead or dying from a
visitation of this fell plague. To say that the children of London are
decimated by it would be putting the case much too mildly. The
mothers, however, take a different view. "She niver looked 'erself
agin sence that 'ere crool vaccination,"--a mother will say
placidly,--ignoring the cold step and the bronchitis that did the
work. "Cold step," indeed, to their minds, acts as a refreshing tonic;
they call it "bringin' 'im,--or 'er,--up 'ardy."
That "pity for a horse o'erdriven" that often catches you by the
throat in London streets,--is yet almost cast into the shade by the
far sadder lot of helpless humanity. 'Bus horses, at any rate, are
well fed,--to say nothing of their being worn out, and released from
their sufferings after an average period of four years; besides, you
can always comfort yourself by refusing to travel by 'bus (I have a
friend, indeed, who always vows that he will NOT on any consideration
make one of twenty-eight people for two horses to pull);--but it is
little or nothing you can do for the alleviation of the lot of the
slum babies. Sad indeed is the case of some of these. For, in some
dingy and romantically-named "Rose Lane,"--or "Marigold-Avenue,"--(the
filthier the London lanes, the more poetic their names),--baby-farms
flourish and spread. Once, I remember coming home sick at heart, from
a visitation of one such slummy "lane." In a dirty "two-pair back" I
found an old woman of witch-like aspect and doubtful sobriety, three
mangy cats, and two miserable "farmed" babies,--one an infant,
wretched, scrofulous, and covered with sores, lying on a dirty flock
bed, its eyes half-closed, in the last stage of exhaustion;--the other
a girl of two, wasted and cadaverous, sitting on the usual "cold
step," and gazing with pathetic and suffering eyes over to the
cabbage-laden and redolent gutter that, filthier far than any in
Italian town or foreign Ghetto, apparently did duty, in the middle of
the paved alley, as a common dustbin. (Truly, it well becomes us to
decry,--in this matter of cleanliness, our neighbours of Central
Europe!) I went away sadly; yet what could I have done? I could not
take the poor neglected babies home; even though they probably
belonged to girls who were not too regular in paying for their weekly
maintenance. Nothing short of bringing in the Law would have been of
any use, and I was not sure enough of my facts to do this. Yet that
elder child's pathetic and mournfully patient eyes still afflict my
memory.
Poor, little, neglected slum children! Miss Dorothy Tennant (Lady
Stanley), has by her unique art surrounded these waifs with all that
glamour of poetry and sentiment that had, by a foolish custom, been
hitherto exclusively reserved for the children of the rich. Even Du
Maurier always made his slum children ugly and repulsive. Nature,
however, knows no such differences. And,--apart from Miss Dorothy
Tennant's charming ragamuffins,--who has not stopped to admire, in
some back street, the graceful dancing of some half-dozen of small
ragged girls? girls in shocking shoes,--but who, nevertheless, hop so
delightfully, and with such sense of time and rhythm, to the wheezy
old organ, the wheeziest of its tribe, that they have inveigled into
their custom. Indeed, I have sometimes doubted whether the organ-man
does not himself engage the small girls to dance, as a catch-penny
_ruse_. They do difficult, intricate, ever-changing steps:
"advance, evade,
Unite, dispart, and dally,
Re-set, coquet, and gallopade,"
as Mr. Austin Dobson hath it.
It is not, indeed, only in hospital wards that the children of the
great city are pathetic. I have been moved (like Mrs. Meagles), almost
to tears, at the sight of a big Ragged School of small boys marching,
ten abreast, in perfect drill, in a large phalanx, numbering about
five hundred. Five hundred unwanted little human souls! each child, of
infant years, with no mother to love it; more destitute in a way than
even the slum baby, regarded as a cipher merely; it is surely a sight
pitiful enough to make the angels weep!
[Illustration: _Hop-scotch._]
All the street child's usual stock in-trade, in the way of toys, is
chalk (for drawing those incessant white squares on the pavement),
perhaps a few worn marbles, and a selection of old buttons. The
chalked squares, of course, refer to the ancient game of "hop-scotch,"
so called because the player in trying to get a stone into a square,
may only "hop" over the lines which are "scotched" or "traced" on the
ground. The London children often use, instead of stones, broken bits
of glass or crockery they call "chaneys"; and to own a private
"chaney" is considered, I believe, highly genteel. The familiar game
of "Tip-cat," and the skipping rope, have rival attractions; and great
enjoyment may be derived from a primitive swing--a bit of rope deftly
fixed between area rails or on lamp-posts. The pavement is the London
child's playground, for, though in some quarters a movement has, I
believe, been started for opening some few of the select "squares" to
poor children at certain days and hours, it would not appear to have
done much as yet. The pavement games and the Board Schools together
often produce a quite wonderful arithmetical sharpness: "The idea of
Em'ly gittin' a prize," I heard a ragged girl of tender years remark
contemptuously to her equally ragged companion, "_Em'ly!_ why, the
girl's a perfect fool; past ten year owld, and can't move the decimal
point!" Like other children, these little pariahs of the street have
their "make-believe" games; for instance, I have seen them look
longingly into toy-shop windows, and heard them talk to each other of
every article there, as though it were their own peculiar property; I
have also overheard them, sitting on a West-End doorstep, appropriate
the mansion thus: "Ain't this 'ere a fine 'ouse, M'ria? didn't know as
yer ma was sich a toff. When are y'going to arst me in to tea?" &c.,
&c. What matter if they pepper their speech continually with such
cockneyisms as "not me," "chawnce it," "you ain't no class"; they are
generally sweet English children all the same, and immeasurably
superior to their surroundings. And such surroundings as they are!
"Our street" (as a little Board School boy described his
home in an essay), "is a long lane betwixt two big streets.
Our street is not so clean as the big streets, coz yer
mothers throws the slops and things in the gutter, and
chucks bits of _Lloyds_ and cabbige leaves in the middle of
the road. That's why there's allus a funny smell down our
street, speshally when it's hot."
Another such essay thus describes a London "Bank Holiday":
"They call this happy day Bank Holiday, becose the banks
shut up shop, so as people can't put their money in, but has
to spend it. People begin talking about Bank Holiday a long
time afore it comes, but they don't begin to spree about
much till the night afore.... Bank Holidays are the happiest
days of your life, becose you can do nearly what you like,
and the perlice don't take no notice of you.... There's only
one thing as spoils Bank Holiday, and that is not being fine
and hot. When it's wet all the gentlemen get savige and
fight one another, and pull their sweetarts and missises
about. I'm very sorry for them all round, becose it is a
shame for to see. But when it's fine and hot, the gentlemen
all larf and are kind, and the women dance about and drink
beer like the gentlemen. Everybody's right, and boys don't
get skittled round."
But, of course, the Board Schools have done, and are doing, much to
improve the rising generation. It is no small tribute to them that
into whatever slum or rough district you elect to go, you are safe if
you surround yourself with a bodyguard of street children. And for the
matter of that, even that pariah of the schools, the London street
arab, is with his "pluck" and general resourcefulness, distinctly
attractive. Have not Dickens and other novelists adopted him as their
hero? All honour to him if he outgrow his base surroundings; small
wonder if he is like poor Tip, "of the prison prisonous and of the
streets streety." Quickwitted, idle, and hardened to privation, he
may, when he grows up, turn to honest work, or he may sink into a
"loafer,"--one of those mysterious beings who arise, as out of thin
air, from the empty street whenever a four wheel cab, with its burden
of boxes, arrives at its destination.
[Illustration: _The Return, Bank Holiday._]
The conversation of the London working man hardly, perhaps, shows him
at his best. The familiar but very unpleasant adjective that
invariably greets your ears as you walk behind him, is in the main its
distinguishing element, and, notwithstanding its more or less
classical derivation (from "by'r Lady"), it is somewhat too suggestive
for squeamish ears. Besides, from the frequency of its use, it would
appear to mean nothing at all, but simply to be a foolish habit that
cannot even plead the excuse of Cockneyism.
What, by-the-way, is the derivation of the term "Cockney"? Its
beginnings, as usual in etymological questions, are abstruse; for
instance, the word began by meaning a "a cockered child"; then it was
synonymous for "a milksop," "an effeminate fellow"; then, (16th
cent.), "a derisive appellation for a townsman as the type of
effeminacy, in contrast to the hardier inhabitants of the country."
Then it became "one born in the city of London, within sound of Bow
Bells"; a Bow-Bell Cockney being always a term "more or less
contemptuous or bantering, and particularly used to connote the
characteristics in which the born Londoner is supposed to be inferior
to other Englishmen."
According, however, to an old writer, the term "cockney"
arose thus: "A Cittizen's sonne riding with his father into
the Country, asked when he heard a horse neigh, what the
horse did; his father answered, the horse doth neigh; riding
further he heard a cocke crow, and said, doth the _cocke
neigh_ too? and therefore Cockney or Cocknie, by inversion
thus: _incock_, q. _incoctus_, i., raw or unripe in
Country-man's affaires."
Some Cockneyisms are frankly puzzling, some are actually startling.
Factory girls are specially prodigal of them. Now, the average factory
girl is often rather a rough diamond, but there is really no harm in
her when once you get used to her ways. She has, it is true, an
embarrassing habit of shouting into the ear of the inoffensive
passer-by; she may even (if she happen, as frequently occurs, to be
walking with two others, three abreast) try to push you into the
gutter; but this is simply her fresh exuberance of spirits; she means
no ill by it. And her frank utterances are not always rudely meant.
For instance, the Cockney remark, "You are a fine old corf-drop, you
are!" may even leave the person addressed in some bewilderment as to
whether it be a compliment or an insult. It means, however, merely,
that you are an "innocent," an ignoramus, a tyro in the ways of the
world. "'Ere's a fine fourpenny lot!" or "Where did you get that 'at?"
seem, on the other hand, to sound a more distinctly aggressive note.
Next to factory-girls and flower-girls, costermongers talk, perhaps,
the raciest "cockney." I once knew an old flower-man with a wonderful
gift of the gab, who was always persuading me to sell him my husband's
old boots, or "a' old skirt for the missus" for some pot of
depressed-looking fern. "Did y' ever see sich fine plants?" he will
cry admiringly of his barrow-full; "all growed up in cold air, I don't
tell you no story. Wy, a gent larst year as kep' a mews, 'e bought a
box 'o stershuns orf o' me, an' this year 'e come back an' said as 'e
didn't wawnt no more o' that sort, cos wy? they blowed too well, they
did, and made 'is winders look that toffy, as 'is landlord see 'em,
and 'is rent wus riz on 'im. Now, this 'ere cherry-pie, you niver see
sich bewties, got real stalks an' roots, _they_ 'ave; been kep' warm
under the children's bed, down our court; 102, Little Red Fox Yard;
kep' in they wuz, cos of the rain; and blimy if they don't look all
the better for it!"
The flower-girls have perhaps less voluble "patter," but their cry,
"Fine Market Bunch!" "'Ere y'are!" is no less patiently reiterated.
The London flower-girl, good-looking as she often is, is yet, perhaps,
hardly an ideal embodiment of the goddess Flora. To begin with, she is
generally enveloped in a thick, rough, unromantic, fringed shawl, and
wears an enormous black hat with a still more enormous feather, the
latter in sad need of curling. Her abundant hair is coiled loosely on
to the nape of her neck, and hangs, in a thick black fringe, over her
eyes and ears; anything more totally unlike the dainty, slim, Venetian
flower-girl can hardly be imagined. Some kind ladies did, indeed, get
up a benevolent scheme for providing London flower-sellers with neat
dresses, bonnets, and hats; two or three women, garbed in this
costume, may still occasionally be seen at London's principal
flower-mart, Oxford Circus. But Londoners are a conservative race, and
it is, I imagine, doubtful if the recipients themselves much
appreciate these gifts.
[Illustration: _Flower Girls._]
The organ-grinders who delight so many humble folk, and enrage and
afflict so many of the richer class, mostly hail from Hatton Garden
and its immediate neighbourhood. The street organ,--"piano-organ" as
its proud possessor generally terms it,--is usually the sole support
of the family. The organ-grinders are, as a rule, Italian; and are
generally to be seen in their picturesque native costume. The organ,
however, requires, to catch many pennies, one, at least, of two useful
adjuncts; viz., a baby in a cradle, or a dressed-up monkey. The baby
sleeps peacefully through the noisiest tunes (what nerves of iron that
child must possess!), the monkey dances and postures, even climbing up
the area railings. Even in places where the organ-man is cursed, he
often reaps a rich harvest of pennies, paid him to go away. Each organ
has its special "pitches," its settled rounds. Thus, coming early from
Hatton Garden, they will frequent Bloomsbury, say at 9 A.M., and work
slowly towards the West End and back, to give the boarding houses in
Bedford Place yet another serenade by the light of the setting sun.
When once started, the organ-man is pitiless in giving you his whole
repertoire. Poor John Leech! it is said that they helped to aggravate
the lingering illness of which he died. But there can be no doubt that
they lighten the drab, unlovely lives of the London poor.
"Children, when they see thy supple
Form approach, are out like shots;
Half-a-bar sets several couple
Waltzing in convenient spots.
"Not with clumsy Jacks or Georges;
Unprofaned by grasp of man
Maidens speed those simple orgies
Betsey Jane with Betsey Ann."
German bands at street corners,--drum-and-fife bands organised by
local talent,--all help, at nightfall, to swell the vast volume of the
noise of London.
There is one day in the week, however, when silence--a silence that
can almost be oppressive--hangs over the entire city, and not even the
sound of the organ-grinder varies the dulness of the monotonous
streets. This is Sunday, a day which strikes terror to the heart of
the uninitiated foreigner. M. Gabriel Mourey thus feelingly describes
it:
"That English Sunday, which so exasperates the French, gives
them, from mere recollection, an attack of the spleen, a fit
of yawning.... Yet to me there is something comforting about
it. It is really a day of rest, of compulsory rest, of rest
against one's will; a day when it is simply impossible to do
otherwise than rest; it is an obligatory imprisonment which
at first revolts the prisoner, but which, if he control his
feelings, he will, at the end of an hour or so, find not
without its charm. To know for certain that no whim, no
fancy for outside amusement can distract you, no theatrical
temptation, no yearning for active life can assail you, to
be assured that you are protected from the Unforeseen, be it
happy or sad, from a letter even--that, in short, it is for
the moment impossible to do anything _useful_,--all this
gives you a tranquil security, a serene and healthful calm
of twenty-four hours, a calm of which we in France, and
especially of Paris, do not know the boon.... And if, in the
evening, you venture on to the deserted streets, you can
pass freely on your way; no one will interrupt your walk; it
is like a dead city; all trace of the life and activity of
the six past days has vanished."'
And here is another, and a still more depressing picture, from the
same author:
"In this immense and respectable cemetery into which London
is metamorphosed on Sundays, some characteristic and amusing
beggars patrol the streets. Two old people, a man and his
wife, stop at a street corner. The man takes a wretched
violin out of an old black cloth bag. The woman sings. What
a voice! a hungry voice of chilly misery, which issues,
bitter and shrill, from her toothless mouth. Though the
weather is warm, she seems to shiver beneath her ragged
shawl. The violin grates on obstinately. The man is tall,
with a kind of remains of grandeur in his torn coat-tails,
and in his face, still haughty, though greasy and bloated.
Some passers-by have stopped, and some pence have dropped
into the old woman's dirty, wasted hand. The man, still
drawing his violin bow, looks round, satisfied, on the
treasure.... Six o'clock strikes from a steeple near; they
suddenly desist, she from her singing, he from the scraping
of his miserable instrument, and they go off to swell the
little crowd which awaits, at the public-house doors, the
sixth stroke of six,--the re-opening of the house where
drunkenness, the cure of hunger-pain, is to be cheaply
bought."
Such tragedies, such pitiful sights, wring the heart every day,
"whene'er I take my walks abroad" in the streets of London. "How the
poor live," indeed! Some of the London waifs would find it hard to
tell you how they do live! The day often divided between the street
and the public-house; the night, perhaps, spent in the shelter of the
"fourpenny doss"; and withal, a delightful uncertainty about the
possibilities of dinner and breakfast. Selling penny toys in the
street in the winter months must be chilly work; and even in the hot
days of August, when the pavements blister in the sun, and American
and German tourists throng the streets with their Baedekers, it must
have its drawbacks. As to the "fourpenny doss," its discomforts are
probably mainly owing to its inmates. The common lodging-houses are
often comparatively clean, with a big, central, well-warmed kitchen,
presided over by a "deputy." But, of course, where many individuals
are herded together in big dormitories, pickpockets will abound;
pickpockets, too, abandoned enough to thieve even from other human
wastrels. The shelter of the "casual ward" is ever held to be the last
resource. A charwoman whom I once knew, a witty and charming
lady,--talented, too, in her _metier_, but alas! I fear, of the "Jane
Cakebread" type,--often complained to me of the horrors she had
endured there. "It's downright crool," she would say with tears in her
eyes, "the way them nurses treats yer. Fust, you 'as to be washed; an'
washed you must be; there's no gittin' away from it. An' your' ed,
too! It's 'Dip your 'ed in,' and dip it you must, will or no. An' with
so much dippin' my 'earin's fair gorn." As for the compulsory oakum
picking, the lady minded it not at all. "I didn't never tike much
count on it," she said; "but there, my 'ands is 'ardened like."
One word of warning to the wise. Do not, in the mistaken kindness of
your heart, take (as Mrs. Carlyle did to her subsequent repentance) to
your own home, children that appear to be "lost"; or at least only do
so under very exceptional circumstances. When children tell you that
they are lost, they are usually only frightened. "Bless your 'art," a
kindly policeman once said to me, "they'll find their way 'ome safe
enough, if you only leave 'em where they are." Even if really lost,
the best place for the stray child is, after all, the police station,
"and" (to quote a Mrs. Gamp-like member of the force), "well they
knows it, the little dears--well they knows as the orficer is always
their best friend." If you do take the child home, it will prove--as
it did to Mrs. Carlyle--as great a riddle as the Sphinx. Once I did
this. I took a lost infant home, indulged it in nuts, oranges, buns,
and picture books; yet still the wretched child howled, refusing, like
Rachel, to be comforted; and I found out to my cost that I had better
have left it alone. (Perhaps the too unaccustomed neatness of my room
distressed it, or the absence of the friendly and familiar "washing.")
But once again was I strongly tempted to play the good Samaritan.
Returning home on a winter's day, I met, in a "mean street," two
children--boy and girl, of seven and eight years--crying bitterly. I
interrogated them as to the cause of their tears:
"Our school's burnt down," the boy said betwixt his sobs, "and we
can't get in there to-day."
A compulsory holiday seemed a feeble reason for howls. "Why don't you
go home and say so?" I inquired.
"'Cause--mother--she w--w--won't believe us," the youth sobbed. "She
said as she'd rive our livers out, if we ever humbugged her any more,
an' stopped away from school--and--and--_it's really burnt down this
time_!"
Terrible Nemesis, indeed, and worthy of Miss Jane Taylor's well-known
"moral poem,"--this unforeseen result of "giving Mamma false alarms!"
Burglars in London are not uncommon; they seem to know, by mere
predatory instinct, the houses where valuables and silver abound. It
is best to treat them, when found, gently but firmly. But if we feel
that we cannot all attain to the courage of the Gower Street matron
who held the thief by the collar till the police came, then we can at
least lock up safely and retire to rest, resolute to ignore all
suspicious sounds within the house. Casual morning visitors give, on
the whole, more trouble to the London householder. Old ladies, for
instance, in black silk that has seen better days, who are kindly
willing to sell to you, for the nominal sum of one and-six, an ancient
recipe for furniture polish, or smart and glib young men who call as
though they were old college friends, and who, only after some
half-hour's discussion of the state of Europe or the weather, divulge
to you the fact that they came as agents for a tea firm. Then there
are the itinerant vendors of tortoises, with barrow-loads of the poor
distressed creatures. "Wonnerful things for beadles, 'm! eat a beadle
as soon as look at 'im"--a thing they seldom, if ever, do. And, on one
memorable occasion, a whole hour of my precious morning was taken up
by an elderly female who represented herself, I know not on what
grounds, as "a relative and scion of the late Sir Humphry Davy"! (I am
glad, on the scion's behalf, to be able to add that she did not also
appropriate the tea-spoons!)
Yet another factor in city life calls for remark. This is the newsboy
of London, a personality into which the street arab not infrequently
develops. He is a curious being, gifted with nine lives; I should
describe him as "a survival of the fittest." His raucous,
indescribably husky voice may be heard at every street corner, crying
either "Win-_ner_," or "Extra Spee-shul." Of late, the newsboys have,
however, battened on war. "Death o' Kroojer," one of them was bawling
one day, before the ex-President's oblivion. "Why are you shouting
what's not true?" I inquired kindly of the youthful delinquent,
"you've got plenty of lighting." "Shut up, you," the urchin retorted,
no whit abashed, "battles is played out!" I once asked a newsboy,
just as a matter of curiosity, what piece of news he had found paid
him best. "Wy, resignation o' Mr. Gladstone," was the prompt reply, "I
got meself a new pair o' boots outer that." The familiar and oft
reiterated cry, "'Orrible Murder!" has, especially since "Jack the
Ripper" days, been sacred to the calm of Sunday evenings, when men of
the roughest class take the place of boys, and generally cry bogus
news. It is a curious fact, which says much for the weakness of human
nature, that the householder can rarely resist the temptation of
buying a Sunday evening paper, even though he knows well, from bitter
experience, that the news cried is almost invariably false.
The curious indifference to other people's affairs that, as already
mentioned, characterises the Londoner,--shows itself also in a certain
want of public spirit. There is, naturally, very little of the proud,
local, personal feeling that the villager and the small townsman so
often feels. The Londoner, on the contrary, is usually self-centred,
unsociable, phlegmatic, narrow. This pleasing quality foreigners
politely excuse in him by calling it "the spleen," and account it,
indeed, a kind of result of the London fog on character. The fog, or
"London particular," as that incorrigible cockney, Sam Weller, called
it, is thus described by a trenchant French satirist, Max O'Rell:
"The London fog, of universal reputation, is of two kinds.
The most curious, and at the same time the less dangerous,
is the black species. It is simply darkness complete and
intense at mid-day. The gas is immediately lighted
everywhere, and when this kind of fog remains in the upper
atmospheric regions, it does not greatly affect you. It does
not touch the earth, and the gas being lighted, it gives you
the impression of being in the street at ten o'clock at
night. Traffic is not stopped; the bustle of the city goes
on as usual. The most terrible of all is the yellow fog,
that the English call pea-soup. This one gets down your
throat and seems to choke you. You have to cover your mouth
with a respirator, if you do not wish to be choked or seized
with an attack of blood-spitting. The gas is useless, you
cannot see it even when you are close to the lamp. Traffic
is stopped. Sometimes for several hours the town seems dead
and buried.... When the sun makes his appearance he is
photographed, that folks may not forget what he is like."
Another Frenchman, M. Gabriel Mourey, describes the fog more
picturesquely:
"The frenzied, unbridled activity of the City" (he says)
"loses half its brutality under the mantle of fog.
Everything seems to be checked, to slacken into a
phantom-like motion that has all the vagueness of
hallucination. The sounds of the street are muffled; the
tops of the houses are lost, hardly even guessed; the lower
and first floors are, apparently, all that exist: behind the
shop-fronts, a light vapour floats, giving to the goods
exposed for sale something of age and disuse. Everything
shares, in a fashion, in the solidity and heaviness of the
atmosphere. The openings of the streets swallow up, like
tunnels, a crowd of foot-passengers and carriages, which
seem, thus, to disappear for ever. The trains that cross
Ludgate Hill wander off into emptiness on a cloud. St.
Paul's resembles some monumental mass of primitive times, at
the foot of which the human ant-heap swarms, ridiculous in
size, of a mean and pitiable activity. Nevertheless, they
are innumerable, a compact army, these miserable little
human creatures; the struggle for life animates them; they
are all of one uniform blackness in the fog; they go to
their daily task, they all use the same gestures, and every
step that they take brings them nearer to death. How many
millions of men for centuries have followed the same road?
and how many millions will follow it in the future, when
these of to-day shall have finished their course? But the
clouds settle down; they rain themselves on to the ground in
black masses; the sky descends among men, and covers them as
with an immense funereal pall."
Londoners are always very quick to "catch on" with the latest "craze";
they tire of it, however, also with proportionate rapidity. Thus, the
hero of May is often forgotten by November, even if he have not
already become a villain by that time. Therefore, with Londoners, it
is best to take the ball on the hop, and gather roses, so to speak,
while you may. A catch-word is in every one's mouth one winter; it is
quite forgotten by next summer. Even a wildly popular new novel has
only a "quick sale" of a few short weeks; and may then be altogether
ousted in favour of a newer aspirant. The great city is notoriously
fickle and wayward in her favours.
Mr. Charles Booth, and his fellow-workers, have, with infinite labour
and trouble, sifted and sorted the population of London into varying
classes of wealth and poverty, of toil, crime, and leisure. The
results of this work, which have reduced the heterogeneous elements of
London population to order as with a fairy's wand, are very
interesting as well as instructive. The results are hardly encouraging
to would-be immigrants from the country; and it is, perhaps, fortunate
that there are still some rustics who hold the great metropolis in
horror, and would not on any account venture near it. This I can
endorse from personal experience. For, only last year, I happened to
express to a well-educated, intelligent, small farmer of some forty
years of age, my surprise that he had never yet thought well to make
the short three hours' journey from his native town to London. He
seemed, however, quite contented with his ignorance. "No," he
remarked, in answer to my wondering question, "I ain't never bin
there, nor yet 'as the missus; and, from all I 'ear, we're best away
from sich places."
[Illustration: _The Men in Blue._]