CLERKENWELLDeep in the town of window smiles—You shall not find it, though you seek;But over many bricky milesIt draws me through the wearing week.Its panes are dim, its curtains grey,It shows no heartsome shine at dusk;For gas is dear, and factory payMakes small display:On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay!A loud saloon flings golden lightAthwart the wet and greasy way,Where, every happy Sunday night,We meet in mood of holiday.She wears a dress of claret glowThat's thinly frothed with bead and lace.She buys this lace in Jasmine Row,A spot, you know,Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go.I love the shops that flare and lurkIn the big street whose lamps are gems,For there she stops when off to workTo covet silks and diadems.At evenings, too, the organ plays"My Hero" or in "Dixie Land";And in the odoured purple haze,Where naphthas blaze,The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise.
CLERKENWELL
CLERKENWELL
Deep in the town of window smiles—You shall not find it, though you seek;But over many bricky milesIt draws me through the wearing week.Its panes are dim, its curtains grey,It shows no heartsome shine at dusk;For gas is dear, and factory payMakes small display:On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay!
Deep in the town of window smiles—
You shall not find it, though you seek;
But over many bricky miles
It draws me through the wearing week.
Its panes are dim, its curtains grey,
It shows no heartsome shine at dusk;
For gas is dear, and factory pay
Makes small display:
On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay!
A loud saloon flings golden lightAthwart the wet and greasy way,Where, every happy Sunday night,We meet in mood of holiday.She wears a dress of claret glowThat's thinly frothed with bead and lace.She buys this lace in Jasmine Row,A spot, you know,Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go.
A loud saloon flings golden light
Athwart the wet and greasy way,
Where, every happy Sunday night,
We meet in mood of holiday.
She wears a dress of claret glow
That's thinly frothed with bead and lace.
She buys this lace in Jasmine Row,
A spot, you know,
Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go.
I love the shops that flare and lurkIn the big street whose lamps are gems,For there she stops when off to workTo covet silks and diadems.At evenings, too, the organ plays"My Hero" or in "Dixie Land";And in the odoured purple haze,Where naphthas blaze,The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise.
I love the shops that flare and lurk
In the big street whose lamps are gems,
For there she stops when off to work
To covet silks and diadems.
At evenings, too, the organ plays
"My Hero" or in "Dixie Land";
And in the odoured purple haze,
Where naphthas blaze,
The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise.
For some obscure reason Saffron Hill is always associated in the public mind with Little Italy. Why, I do not know. It isn't and never was Italian. There is not a trace of anything the least Italian about it. There isn't a shop or a home in the whole length of it. It is just a segment of the City, E.C.—a straggling street of flat-faced warehouses and printing-works; high, impassive walls; gaunt, sombre, and dumb; not one sound or spark of life to be heard or seen anywhere. Yet that is what the unknowing think of when they think of the Italian quarter.
The true, warm heart of Italy in London is Eyre Street Hill, which slips shyly out of one of the romantic streets of London—Clerkenwell Road. There is something very taking about Clerkenwell Road, something snug and cheering. It is full, clustering, and alive. Here is the Italian Church. Here is St. John's Gate, where Goldsmith and Isaac Walton and a host of other delightful fellows lived. This gatehouse is now all that remains of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem around which the little village of Clerkenwell developed. Very near, too, are Cloth Fair, Bartholomew's Close, Smithfield, and a hundred other echoes of past times. And here—most exciting of all—the redoubtable Mr. Heinz (famous for his 57 Varieties) has his warehouse.
There is a waywardness about Clerkenwell Road. It never seems quite to know where it shall go. It drifts, winds, rises, drops, debouches. You climb its length, and, at the top, you see a wide open space, which is Mount Pleasant, and you think you have reached itsend; but you haven't. There is much more to come. It doesn't stop until it reaches Gray's Inn Road, and then it stops sharply, unexpectedly. But the romance of the place lies not only in its past; there is an immediate romance, for which you must turn into its byways. Here live all those bronzed street-merchants who carry delightful things to our doors—ice-cream, roast chestnuts, roast potatoes, chopped wood, and salt. In unsuspected warehouses here you may purchase wonderful toys that you never saw in any other shops. You may buy a barrow and a stove and a complete apparatus for roasting potatoes and chestnuts, including a natty little poker for raking out the cinders. You may buy a gaudily decorated barrow and freezing-plant for the manufacture and sale of ice-cream. Or—and as soon as I have the money this is what I am going to buy in Clerkenwell—you may buy a real street organ—a hundred of them, if you wish. While the main road and the side streets on the south are given up to the watch and clock-makers, the opposite side-streets are Italian soil. Here are large warehouses where the poor Italian may hire an organ for the day, or week, or month. A rehearsal at one of these show-rooms is a deafening affair; it is just like Naples on a Sunday morning. As the organs come over from Italy, they are "tried out," and any flaws are immediately detected by the expert ear. In the same way, a prospective hirer always tries his instrument before concluding the deal, running through the tunes to be sure that they are fairly up-to-date. When you get, say, six clients all rehearsing their organs at once in a small show-room....
This organ industry, by the way, is a very big thing; and the dealers make much more by hire than by sale. Sometimes apadrone, who has done very well, will buy an organ; later, he may buy another organ, and perhaps another. Then, with three organs, he sits down, and sends other men out with them. Street organs, under our fatherly County Council, are forbidden on Sundays;nevertheless, Sunday being the only day when millions of people have any chance of recreation, many organs go out. Whither do they go? East, my dears. There, in any ramshackle hall, or fit-up arch-way, or disused stables, the boys and girls, out for fun, may dance the golden hours away throughout Sunday afternoon and evening. Often the organs are hired for Eastern weddings and christenings and other ceremonials, and, by setting the musician to work, say, in the back parlour, the boys and girls can fling their little feet about the garden without interference from any one of the hundred authorities who have us at their mercy.
It is because of the organs, I think, that I chiefly loved Clerkenwell. Organs have been part of my life ever since I was old enough to sit up and take notice. Try to think of London without organs. Have they not added incalculably to the store of human happiness, and helped many thousands over the waste patches of the week? They have; and I heap smouldering curses upon the bland imbeciles of Bayswater who, some time ago, formed themselves into a society for, I think they called it, The Abatement of Street Noises, and stuck their loathly notices in squares and public streets forbidding street organs to practise there. Let house-agents take note that I and a dozen of my friends will never, never, never take a house in any area where organs or street vendors or street cries are prohibited. They are part of the very soul of London. Kill them, and you kill something lovely and desirable, without which the world will be the sadder. That any one should have the impudence to ask for money for the carrying out of such a project is merely another proof of the disease of the age. They might as well form a society and appeal for funds for suppressing children from laughing or playing in the streets. They might as well form a society for the strangulation of all babies. They might as well.... But if I go on like this, I shall get angry. Thank Heaven, organs are not yet suppressed, though, after thecurtailing of licensed hours, anything is possible. In that event, it really looks as if America were the only country in which to live, unless one could find some soft island in the Pacific, where one could do just as one jolly well pleased.
Let's all go down Eyre Street Hill, for there, you know, organs are still gurgling, and there are lazy laughter and spaghetti anddolce far niente, and cigarettes are six a penny. There are little restaurants here hardly bigger than a couple of telephone boxes. They contain but two tables, and some wooden benches, but about a dozen gloriously savage boys from Palermo and Naples are noisily supping after their day's tramp round London with whatever industry they affect. They have olive skins, black curly hair, flashing eyes, and fingers that dance with gemmy rings. A new-comer arrives, unhooking from his shoulders the wooden tray which holds the group of statuettes that he has been hawking round Streatham and Norwood. He salutes them in mellifluous tones, and sits down. He orders nothing; but a heaped-up dish of macaroni is put before him, and he attacks it with fork and finger. There are few women to be seen, but those few are gaudily arrayed in coloured handkerchiefs, their mournful eyes and purring voices touching the stern night to beauty. Of children there are dozens: furious boys and chattering girls. All the little girls, from four to fourteen, wear socks, and the narrow roadway flashes with the whirling of little white legs, so that the pedestrian must dodge his way along as one dancing aschottische. A few public-houses shed their dusty radiance, but these, too, are little better than dolls' houses. I have never seen village beer-shops so small. They are really about the size of the front room of a labourer's cottage, divided into two—Public Bar and Private Bar.
Such is the High Street of Italy, where one feeds. Most of the Italians, however, live in one of those huge blocks of tenements of which there are, I should think,a dozen in Clerkenwell. They seem to centre about the sounding viaducts that leap over Rosebery Avenue. Upon a time the place had a reputation for lawlessness, but that is now gone, with most of the colour of things. Occasionally there is an affray with knives, but it is always among themselves: a sort of vendetta; and nobody interferes so long as they refrain from bloodshed or from annoying peaceable people. The services in the Italian Church are very picturesque, and so, too, are their ceremonies at Christmas-time; while the procession of the children at First Communion is a thing of beauty. The little girls and boys walk together, the boys in black, the girls in white, with white wreaths gleaming in their dark curls. At Christmas-time there are great feasts, and every Italian baker and restaurant-keeper stocks his trays with Panetonnes, a kind of small loaf or bun, covered with sugar, which are distributed among the little ones of the Church.
An old friend of mine, named Luigi, who once kept a tiny wine-shop, lives in a little dirty room in Rosoman Street, and I sometimes spend an evening with him. But not in summer. I adjure you—do not visit an impoverished Italian who lives in one room in Clerkenwell, in the summer; unless, of course, you are a sanitary inspector. He is an entertaining old fellow, and speaks a delicious Italian-Cocknese, which no amount of trickery could render on the printed page. When I go, I usually take him a flask of Chianti and some Italian cigars, for which he very nearly kisses me.
But Luigi has a story. You will see that at once if you scan his face. There is something behind him—something he would like to forget. It happened about ten years ago, and I witnessed it. Ten years ago, Luigi did something—an act at once heroic, tragic, and idiotic. This was the way of it.
It was an April night, and we were lounging at that corner which was once called Poverty Point; the corner where Leather Lane crashes into Clerkenwell Road, andwhere, of a summer night, gather the splendid sons of Italy to discuss, to grin, to fight, and to invent new oaths. On this corner, moreover, they pivot in times of danger, and, once they can make the mazy circle of which it is the edge, safety from the pursuer is theirs. The place was alive with evening gladness. In the half-darkness, indolent groups lounged or strolled, filling their lungs with the heavily garlicked air of the place.
Then an organ pulled up at the public-house which smiles goldenly upon Mount Pleasant, and music broke upon us. Instantly, with the precision of a harlequinade, a stream of giggling girls poured from Eyre Street Hill and Back Hill. With the commencement of a rag-tag dance, the Point was whipped to frivolous life. The loungers grunted, and moved up to see. Clusters of children, little angels with dark eyes and language sufficiently seasoned to melt a glacier, slipped up from nowhere, and, one by one, the girls among them slid into the dance. One of them had a beribboned tambourine. Two others wanted it, and would snatch it away. Its owner said they were—something they could not possibly have been.
Stabs of light from the tenements pierced the dusk high and low. The night shone with recent rain, and in a shifting haze of grey and rose the dancers sank and glided, until the public-house lamp was turned on and a cornet joined the organ. In the warm yellow light, the revels broke bounds, and, to the hysterical appeal of "Hiawatha," the Point became a Babel.... When most of the dancers had danced themselves to exhaustion, two of the smaller maidens stood out and essayed a kind of can-can.
The crowd swooped in. It crowded with appreciation as they introduced all the piquant possibilities of the dance. It babbled its merriment at seeing little faces, which should show only the revel of April, bearing all the ravage of Autumn.
Comments and exhortations, spiced to taste, flew aboutthe Point, ricochetted, and returned in boomerang fashion to their authors, who repolished them and shot them forth again. Heads bobbed back, forth, and up in the effort to see. In a prestissimo fire of joy, the novel exercise reached its finale, when ...
"Hi-hi!Hè.Eeeee!" As though by signal, the whole Point was suddenly aspurt with spears of flame, leaping, meeting, and crossing. We looked round. The dance stopped, the organ gurgled away to rubbish, the crowd took open order, and stared at the narrow alley of Back Hill. Blankets of smoke moved from its mouth, pushing their suffocating way up the street. Twenty people hurt themselves in shrieking orders. Women screamed and ran. From an open window a tongue of flame was thrust derisively; it tickled a man's neck, and he swore. Then a lone woman had the sense to scream something intelligible.
We all ran. English, Italian, and profane clashed together. Three small boys strangled each other in a race for the fire-bell. In Back Hill, men, women, and children were hustling themselves through the ground-floor window of the doomed house. Thick, languid flames blocked the doorway, swaying idly, ready to fasten their fangs in anything that approached. Furniture crashed and bounded to the pavement. Mattresses were flung out to receive the indecent figures of their owners. The crowd swelled feverishly. Women screamed.
Gradually the crackle of burning wood and the ripple of falling glass gained voice above the outcry of the crowd. A shout of fear and admiration surged up, as a spout of flame darted through the roof, and quivered proudly to the sky. Luigi threw back his sweeping felt hat, loosened his yellow neckcloth, tightened his scarlet waistband. "It is bad," he said. "It is a fire."
I said "Yes," having nothing else to say. A few Cockneys inquired resentfully why somebody didn't do something. Then the word went round that all were outbut one. A woman was left at the top. A sick hush fell. Away in the upper regions a voice was wailing. The women turned pale, and one or two edged away. The men whistled silently, and looked serious. They had the air of waiting for something. It came. Luigi moved swiftly away from me, fought a way through the crowd, and stood by the door, his melodious head lashed by the fringe of the flames.
"I go up," he said operatically.
A dozen men dashed from him, crying things. "Wet blanket, there. Quick! Here's a bloke going up. Italiano's going up!"
At the back of the crowd, where I stood, a few fools cheered. They were English. "'Ray! 'Ray! 'Ray! Good iron! 'E's gotter nerve, 'e 'as. Wouldn't athought it o' them Italians."
The Italians were silent. From the house came long screams, terrible to hear in the London twilight. A Sicilian said something in his own language which cannot be set down; the proprietor of the Ristorante del Commercio also grew profane. The children stared and giggled, wonderingly. Blankets and buckets of water were conjured from some obscure place of succour. In half a minute the blankets were soaked, and Luigi was ready.
A wispy man in a dented bowler danced with excitement. "Oh, he's gotter nerve, if yeh like. Going to risk his life, he is. Going to risk his blasted life." Fresh and keener screams went down the golden stairway. Luigi flung the wet folds about him, vaulted the low sill, and then the wild light danced evilly about him. Outside, we watched and waited. A lurid silence settled, and the far cries of one of the late dancers who was receiving correction for dancing indecent dances seemed entirely to fill space. The atmosphere was, as it were, about to crack and buckle, and I was feeling that Luigi was a heroic fool, when a passing navvy, not susceptible to influences, saved the situation by bursting into song:—
"You're here and I'm here,So what do we care?"
"You're here and I'm here,So what do we care?"
"You're here and I'm here,
So what do we care?"
The wispy man looked round, reprovingly. "Easy on, there!" he implored.
"Whaffor?"
"Well ... chep's risking his life."
"Well ... 'at don't make no difference. Be 'appy while yeh can, I say."
"No, but ... chep's risking his life."
"Yew maide me love yew,I didn't wanter do it!"
"Yew maide me love yew,I didn't wanter do it!"
"Yew maide me love yew,
I didn't wanter do it!"
"Risking his life, and all!"
Then the climax was reached. A scream sounded from above, then silence, then a confused rush of feet. The figure of Luigi filled the opening of the low window, and those nearest surged in to help and see. He was dragged through, head first, and set on his feet. The fire-engine raved and jangled in Clerkenwell Road, but there was no way for it. The firemen tried to clear the crowd, but it would not be denied its sight of the hero. It struggled in to admire. It roared and yelled in one and a hundred voices. The café proprietor gestured magnificently. Regard the hero! How he was brave! The wispy man nearly had a fit. He skipped. Risked his life, and all. For a blasted stranger.
Luigi dropped the bundle gently from his arms, and stood over it, a little bewildered at his reception. The firemen fought furiously, and at last they cleared a passage for their plant. Then, as they cleared, the wispy man danced again, and seemed likely to die. He sprang forward and capered before Luigi. I tried to get through to help Luigi out, but I was wedged like a fishbone in the throat of the gang.
It was then that horrid screams came again from the house, winding off in ragged ends. The wispy, man spluttered.
"Yeh damn fool! Look what yeh brought down. Look at it. Yeh damn fool!"
Luigi looked still bewildered, and now I fought with sharp elbows, and managed to get to the front rank. The man's shaking finger pointed at Luigi's feet. "D'you know what you done, Italiano? You made a mistake. A blasted mistake. Aw ... yeh damn fool!"
I looked too. There was no woman at Luigi's feet. There was a bundle of sheets, blanket, and carpet. A scream came from the house. Every window filled with flame. The roof fell inwards with a crash and a rain of sparks.
Clerkenwell has never forgiven Luigi. Luigi has never forgiven himself.
LONDON JUNERank odours ride on every breeze;Skyward a hundred towers loom;And factories throb and workshops wheeze,And children pine in secret gloom.To squabbling birds the roofs declaimTheir little tale of misery;And, smiling over murk and shame,A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.Where every traffic-thridden streetIs ribboned o'er with shade and shine,And webbed with wire and choked with heat;Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine;And where, at evening, darkling lanesFume with a sickly ribaldry—Above the squalors and the pains,A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.Somewhere beneath a nest of tilesMy little garret window squats,Staring across the cruel miles,And wondering of kindlier spots.An organ, just across the way,Sobs out its ragtime melody;But in my heart it seems to play:A wild rose blows by Bermondsey!And dreams of happy morning hillsAnd woodlands laced with greenest boughsAre mine to-day amid the illsOf Tooley Street and wharfside sloughs,Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar,And engines gasp their horrid glee;I mark their ugliness no more:A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
LONDON JUNE
LONDON JUNE
Rank odours ride on every breeze;Skyward a hundred towers loom;And factories throb and workshops wheeze,And children pine in secret gloom.To squabbling birds the roofs declaimTheir little tale of misery;And, smiling over murk and shame,A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
Rank odours ride on every breeze;
Skyward a hundred towers loom;
And factories throb and workshops wheeze,
And children pine in secret gloom.
To squabbling birds the roofs declaim
Their little tale of misery;
And, smiling over murk and shame,
A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
Where every traffic-thridden streetIs ribboned o'er with shade and shine,And webbed with wire and choked with heat;Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine;And where, at evening, darkling lanesFume with a sickly ribaldry—Above the squalors and the pains,A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
Where every traffic-thridden street
Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine,
And webbed with wire and choked with heat;
Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine;
And where, at evening, darkling lanes
Fume with a sickly ribaldry—
Above the squalors and the pains,
A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
Somewhere beneath a nest of tilesMy little garret window squats,Staring across the cruel miles,And wondering of kindlier spots.An organ, just across the way,Sobs out its ragtime melody;But in my heart it seems to play:A wild rose blows by Bermondsey!
Somewhere beneath a nest of tiles
My little garret window squats,
Staring across the cruel miles,
And wondering of kindlier spots.
An organ, just across the way,
Sobs out its ragtime melody;
But in my heart it seems to play:
A wild rose blows by Bermondsey!
And dreams of happy morning hillsAnd woodlands laced with greenest boughsAre mine to-day amid the illsOf Tooley Street and wharfside sloughs,Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar,And engines gasp their horrid glee;I mark their ugliness no more:A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
And dreams of happy morning hills
And woodlands laced with greenest boughs
Are mine to-day amid the ills
Of Tooley Street and wharfside sloughs,
Though Cherry Gardens reek and roar,
And engines gasp their horrid glee;
I mark their ugliness no more:
A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.
Hoxton is not merely virile; it is virulent. Life here hammers in the blood with something of the insistence of ragtime. The people—men, women, and children—are alive, spitefully alive. You feel that they are ready to do you damage, with or without reason. Here are antagonism and desire, stripped for battle. Little children, of three years old, have the spirit in them; for they lean from tenement landings that jut over the street, and, with becoming seriousness, spit upon the passing pedestrians, every hit scoring two to the marksman.
The colour of Hoxton Street is a tremendous purple. It springs upon you, as you turn from Old Street, and envelops you. There are high, black tenement houses. There are low cottages and fumbling passages. There are mellow fried-fish shops at every few yards. There are dirty beer-houses and a few public-houses. There are numerous cast-off clothingsalons. And there are screeching Cockney women, raw and raffish, brutalized children, and men who would survive in the fiercest jungle. Also there is the Britannia Theatre and Hotel. The old Brit.! It stands, with Sadler's Wells and the Surrey, as one of the oldest homes of fustian drama. Sadler's Wells is now a picture palace, and the Surrey is a two-house Variety show. The old Brit. held out longest, but even that is going now. Its annual pantomime was one of the events of the London Season for the good Bohemian. Then all the Gallery First Nighters boys and girls would go down on the last night, which was Benefit Night for Mrs. Sara Lane, the proprietress. Not only were bouquets handed up, but the audienceshowered upon her tributes in more homely and substantial form. Here was a fine outlet for the originality of the crowd, and among the things that were passed over the orchestra-rails or lowered from boxes and circles were chests of drawers, pairs of corsets, stockings, pillow-cases, washhand jugs and basins, hip-baths, old boots, mince-pies, Christmas puddings, bottles of beer, and various items of lumber and rubbish which aroused healthy and Homeric laughter at the moment, but which, set down in print at a time when Falstaffian humour has departed from us, may arouse nothing but a curled lip and a rebuke. But it really was funny to see the stage littered with these tributes, which, as I say, included objects which are never exhibited in the light of day to a mixed company.
But the cream of Hoxton is its yobs. It is the toughest street in London. I don't mean that it is dangerous. But if you want danger, you have only to ask for it, and it is yours. It will not be offered you anywhere in London, but if you do ask for it, Hoxton is the one place where there is "no waiting," as the barbers say. The old Shoreditch Nile is near at hand, and you know what that was in the old days. Well, Hoxton to-day does its best to maintain the tradition of "The Nile."
Now once upon a time there was a baby-journalist named Simple Simon. He went down to Hoxton one evening, after dinner. It had been the good old English dinner of Simpson's, preceded by two vermuths, accompanied by a pint of claret, and covered in the retreat by four maraschinos. It was a picturesque night. A clammy fog blanketed the whole world. It swirled and swirled. Hoxton Street was a glorious dream, as enticingly indefinite as an opium-sleep. Simple Simon had an appointment here. The boys were to be out that night. Jimmie Flanagan, their leader, had passed the word to Simon that something would be doing, something worth being in. For that night was to witness the complete and enthusiastic bashing of Henry Wiggin, the copper'snark, the most loathed and spurned of all creeping things that creep upon the earth.
Simon walked like a lamb into the arms of trouble. He strolled along the main street, peering every yard of his way through the writhing gloom. Nobody was about. He reached Bell Yard, and turned into it. Then he heard something. Something that brought him to a sharp halt. Before he saw or heard anything more definite, he felt that he was surrounded. To place direction of sound was impossible. He heard, from every side, like the whisper of a load of dead leaves, the rush of rubber shoes. With some agility he leaped to what he thought was the clear side, only to take a tight arm like a rope across his chest and another about his knees.
"There's one fer yew, 'Enry!" cried a spirited voice as a spirited palm smote him on the nose.
"Hi! Hi! Easy!" Simon appealed. "I ain't 'Enry, dammit! You're bashing me—me—Simon!" He swore rather finely; but the fog, the general confusion, and, above all, the enthusiasm of bashing rendered identification by voice impracticable. Indeed, if any heard it, it had no effect; for, so they had some one to bash, they would bash. It didn't matter to them, just so it was a bash. Flanagan heard it quite clearly, but he knew the madness of attempting to stop eleven burly Hoxton yobs once they were well in....
"I'm not 'Enry. I ain't the nark!" But he was turned face downward, and his mouth was over a gully-hole, so that his protests scared only the rats in the sewer. He set his teeth, and writhed and jerked and swung, and for some seconds no bashing could proceed, for he was of the stuff of which swordsmen are made—small, lithe, and light: useless in a stand-up fight with fists, but good for anything in a scrum. When, however, as at present, eleven happy lads were seeking each a grip on his person, it became difficult to defeat their purpose. But at last, as he was about to make a final wrench at the expense of his coat, the metal tips on hisboots undid him. He dug his heels backward to get a purchase, he struck the slippery surface of the kerb instead of the yielding wood of the roadway, and in a moment he was down beyond all struggle. A foot landed feelingly against his ribs, another took him on the face; and for all that they were rubbered they stung horribly. Then, with two pairs of feet on his stomach, and two on his legs, he heard that wild whisper that may unnerve the stoutest—
"Orf wi' yer belts, boys!"
The bashing of the nark was about to begin. There was a quick jingle as many leather belts were loosed, followed by a whistle, and—zpt! he received the accolade of narkhood. Again and again they came, and they stung and bit, and he could not move. They spat all about him. He swore crudely but sincerely, and if oaths have any potency his tormentors should have withered where they stood. Two and three at a time they came, for there were eleven of them—Flanagan having discreetly retired—and all were anxious to christen their nice new belts on the body of the hated nark; and they did so zealously, while Simon could only lie still and swear and pray for a happy moment that should free one of his hands....
He knew it was a mistake, and he kept his temper so far as possible. But human nature came out with the weals and bruises. He didn't want to do the dirty on them, he didn't want to take extreme steps, but dammit, this was the frozen limit. He knew that when their mistake was pointed out they would offer lavish apologies and pots of four-'arf, but the flesh is only the flesh.
"Turn the blanker over!"
In that moment, as he was lifted round, his left hand was freed. In a flash it fumbled at his breast. Twisting his head aside, he got something between his teeth, and through the fetid fog went the shiver and whine of the Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he blew, with the correct inflection.
At the first call he was dropped like a hot coal. From other worlds came an answering call. He blew again. Then, like thin jets of water, whistles spurted from every direction. He heard the sound of scuttering feet as his enemies withdrew. He heard the sound of scuttering feet as they closed in again. But he was not waiting for trouble. He pulled his burning self together, and ran for the lights that stammered through the gloom at the Britannia. He whistled as he ran. Curses followed him.
At the Britannia he collided with a slow constable. He flung a story at him. The constable inspected him, and took notes. The lurking passages began to brighten with life, and where, a moment ago, was sick torpidity was now movement, clamour. Distant whistles still cried. The place tingled with nervous life.
Some cried "Whassup?" and some cried "Stanback, cancher!" They stared, bobbed, inquired, conjectured. The women were voluble. The men spat. A forest of faces grew up about Simple Simon. A hurricane of hands broke about his head. The constable took notes and whistled. A humorist appeared.
"'Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo! Back water there, some of yer. Stop yer shoving. Ain't nobody bin asking for me? Stop the fight. I forbid the bangs!"
But he was not popular. They jostled him.
"'Ere," cried some one, "let some one else have a see, Fatty! Other people wanter have a see, don't they?"
"Stanback—stanback! Why cancher stanback!"
Fatty inquired if Someone wanted a smash over the snitch. Because, if so....
A woman held that Simple Simon had a rummy hat on. There were pauses, while the crowd waited and shuffled its feet, as between the acts.
Fatty asked why some one didn't do something. Alwis the way, though—them police. Stanback—git back on your mat, Toby.
And then ... and then the swelling, clamorous, complaining crowd swooped in on itself with a sudden undeniable movement. Its centre flattened, wavered, broke, and the impelling force was brought face to face with Simple Simon and the constable. It was Flanagan and the boys.
Three pairs of arms collared the constable low. Simple Simon felt a jerk on his arm that nearly pulled it from its socket, and a crackling like sandpaper at his ear. "Bolt for it!"
And he would have done so, but at that moment the answering whistles leaped to a sharper volume, and through the distorting fog came antic shapes of blue, helmeted. The lights of the Britannia rose up. Panic smote the crowd, and for a moment there was a fury of feet.
Women screamed. Others cried for help. Some one cried, "Hot stuff, boys—let 'em 'ave it where it 'urts most!"
Fatty cried: "Git orf my foot! If I find the blank blank blank what trod on my blank 'and, I'll——!"
"Look out, boys! Truncheons are out!"
They ran, slipped, fell, rolled. A cold voice from a remote window, remarked, above the din, that whatever he'd done he'd got a rummy hat on. A young girl was pinioned against the wall by a struggling mass for whom there was no way. There was in the air an imminence of incident, acid and barbed. The girl screamed. She implored. Then, with a frantic movement, her free hand flew to her hat. She withdrew something horrid, and brought it down, horridly, three times. Three shrieks flitted from her corner like sparks from a funnel. But her passage was cleared.
Then some important fool pulled the fire-alarm.
"Stanback, Stinkpot, cancher? Gawd, if I cop that young 'un wi' the bashed 'elmet, I'll learn him hell!"
"If I cop 'old of the blanker what trod on my 'and, I'll——!"
"No, but—'e 'ad a rummy 'at on. 'E 'ad."
Away distant, one heard the brazen voice of the fire-engine, clanging danger through the yellow maze of Hoxton streets. There was the jangle of harness and bells; the clop-clop of hoofs, rising to a clatter. There was the scamper of a thousand feet as the engine swung into the street with the lordliest flourish and address. Close behind it a long, lean red thing swayed to and fro, like some ancient dragon seeking its supper.
"Whichway, whichway, whichway?" it roared.
"Ever bin had?" cried the humorist. "There ain't no pleading fire! This is a picnic, this is. 'Ave a banana?"
"WhichWAY?" screamed the engine. "Don't no one know which way?"
The humorist answered them by a gesture known in polite circles as a "raspberry." Then a constable, with fierce face, battered helmet, and torn tunic, and with an arm-lock on a perfectly innocent non-combatant, flung commands in rapid gusts—
"This way, Fire. King's name. Out hoses!"
The fog rolled and rolled. The Britannia gleamed on the scene with almost tragic solemnity. Agonized shapes rushed hither and thither. Women screamed. Then a rich Irish voice sang loud above all: "Weeny, boys!"
As the firemen leaped from their perches on the engine to out hoses, so, mysteriously, did the combat cease. Constables found themselves, in a moment, wrestling with thick fog and nothing more. The boys were gone. Only women screamed.
Some one said: "If I cop a hold of the blankety blank blanker what trod on my blanking 'and, I'll just about——!"
On the word "Weeny" Simple Simon was once again jerked by the arm, and hustled furiously down passages, round corners, and through alleyways, finally to be flung into the misty radiance of Shoreditch High Street, withthe terse farewell: "Now run—for the love of glory, run!"
But he didn't. He stood still against a friendly wall, and suffered. He straightened his dress. He touched sore places with a tender solicitude. His head was racking. All his limbs ached and burned. He desired nothing but the cold sheets of his bed and a bottle of embrocation. He swore at the fog, with a fine relish for the colour of sounds. He swore at things that were in no way responsible for his misfortune. Somewhere, he conjectured, in warmth and safety, Henry Wiggin, the copper's nark, was perfectly enjoying his supper of fried fish and 'taters and stout.
And then, over the sad, yellow night, faint and sweet and far away, as the memory of childhood, came a still small voice—
"No, but 'e 'ad a rummy 'at on, eh?"
WEST INDIA DOCK ROADBlack man—white man—brown man—yellow man—All the lousy Orient loafing on the quay:Hindoo, Dago, Jap, Malay, and ChinamanDipping into London from the great green sea!Black man—white man—brown man—yellow man—Pennyfields and Poplar and Chinatown for me!Stately-moving cut-throats and many-coloured mysteries,Never were such lusty things for London lads to see!On the evil twilight—rose and star and silver—Steals a song that long ago in Singapore they sang:Fragrant of spices, of incense and opium,Cinnamon and aconite, the betel and the bhang.Three miles straight lies lily-clad Belgravia,Thin-lipped ladies and padded men and pale.But here are turbaned princes and velvet-glancing gentlemen,Tom-tom and sharp knife and salt-caked sail.Then get you down to Limehouse, by riggings, wharf, and smoke-stack,Glamour, dirt, and perfume, and dusky men and gold;For down in lurking Limehouse there's the blue moon of the Orient—Lamps for young Aladdins, and bowies for the bold!
WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD
Black man—white man—brown man—yellow man—All the lousy Orient loafing on the quay:Hindoo, Dago, Jap, Malay, and ChinamanDipping into London from the great green sea!
Black man—white man—brown man—yellow man—
All the lousy Orient loafing on the quay:
Hindoo, Dago, Jap, Malay, and Chinaman
Dipping into London from the great green sea!
Black man—white man—brown man—yellow man—Pennyfields and Poplar and Chinatown for me!Stately-moving cut-throats and many-coloured mysteries,Never were such lusty things for London lads to see!
Black man—white man—brown man—yellow man—
Pennyfields and Poplar and Chinatown for me!
Stately-moving cut-throats and many-coloured mysteries,
Never were such lusty things for London lads to see!
On the evil twilight—rose and star and silver—Steals a song that long ago in Singapore they sang:Fragrant of spices, of incense and opium,Cinnamon and aconite, the betel and the bhang.
On the evil twilight—rose and star and silver—
Steals a song that long ago in Singapore they sang:
Fragrant of spices, of incense and opium,
Cinnamon and aconite, the betel and the bhang.
Three miles straight lies lily-clad Belgravia,Thin-lipped ladies and padded men and pale.But here are turbaned princes and velvet-glancing gentlemen,Tom-tom and sharp knife and salt-caked sail.
Three miles straight lies lily-clad Belgravia,
Thin-lipped ladies and padded men and pale.
But here are turbaned princes and velvet-glancing gentlemen,
Tom-tom and sharp knife and salt-caked sail.
Then get you down to Limehouse, by riggings, wharf, and smoke-stack,Glamour, dirt, and perfume, and dusky men and gold;For down in lurking Limehouse there's the blue moon of the Orient—Lamps for young Aladdins, and bowies for the bold!
Then get you down to Limehouse, by riggings, wharf, and smoke-stack,
Glamour, dirt, and perfume, and dusky men and gold;
For down in lurking Limehouse there's the blue moon of the Orient—
Lamps for young Aladdins, and bowies for the bold!
Tide was at flood, and below Limehouse Hole the waters thrashed the wharves with malice. The hour was late, but life ran high in those parts. Against the savage purple of the night a few wisps of rigging and some gruff funnels stood up in East and West India Docks.
Sheer above the walls of East India Dock rose the deck of theCawdor Castle, as splendidly correct as a cathedral. The leaping lines of her seemed lost in the high skies, and she stood out sharply, almost ecstatically. Against such superb forces of man, the forces of Nature seemed dwarfed. It was a lyric in steel and iron. Men hurried from the landing-stage, up the plank, vanishing into the sly glooms of the huge port-holes. Chains rang and rattled. Lascars of every kind flashed here and there: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in every lingo was on the air. Some hurried from the dock, making for a lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock, with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous voice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men, EEEE-ah, EEEE-ah!" Boats were loading up. Others were unloading. Over all was the glare of arclights, and the flutter of honeyed tongues.
A few tugs were moored at the landing-stages. One or two men hung about them, smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall streets came to them in throbbing blasts, for it was Saturday night, and closing time. Over the great plain of London went up a great cry. Outsidethe doors of every hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand wives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, for a thousand jovial or brutal mates; and a thousand beds received their occupants in full harness, booted and hatted, as though the enemy were at the gates. Everywhere strains of liquor-music surged up for the next thirty minutes, finally to die away piecemeal as different roads received different revellers.
In the hot, bilious dark of Blackwall, the tug swayed and jerked, and the voices of the men seemed almost to shatter the night. But high above them was the dirty main street, and there "The Galloping Horses" flared and fluttered and roared. There seemed to be trouble.... One heard a querulous voice: "I saidTime, din' I?" And another: "Well, let 'im prove it. Let 'im 'it me, that's all!" From the tug you could see the dust of the street rise in answering clouds to the assaults of many feet. Then, quite suddenly, the wide swing-doors of the bar flapped back. A golden gleam burst on the night and seemed to vomit a slithering mass of men which writhed and rolled like an octopus. Then you heard the collapsible gates run to their sockets with a glad clang, and the gas was switched off.
The fester of noise widened and widened, and at last burst into twenty minute pieces. And now a large voice commanded the silence of the night, and cried upon London: "What I said is what I say now: that fan-tan is fan-tan. And blasted miracles is blasted miracles."
I stood on the tug, with some of the boys, and in silence we watched the drama that was about to unfolditself. I had tramped there, unthinkingly, up the thunderous length of Rotherhithe Tunnel and down East India Dock Road and had fallen in with Chuck Lightfoot and some of his waterside cronies. We were lounging on the tug, so far as I remember, because we were lounging on the tug. For no other reason.
After the outcry of the Great Voice, there was a short silence. It was broken by a woman, who cried: "Ar-ferr!"
"You go on 'ome!" cried Arfer.
The woman replied that bad-word husbands who stayed out so bad-wordily late ought to be bad-wordily bad-worded. The next moment Arfer had gone down to a blow from the Great Voice.
Things began to happen. There was a loud scratch as a hundred feet scuttered backward. The victim sprang up. For a moment astonishment seemed to hold him, as he bleared; then he seemed about to burst with wrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The lady screamed for aid. He spat on his hands. He hitched his trousers. Hands down, chin protruded, he advanced on his opponent with the slow, insidious movement of the street fighter. The other man dashed in, beat him off with the left, and followed it with three to the face with the right. He pressed his man. He ducked a lumbering right swing, and sent a one-two to the body. The lady had lashed herself to a whirlwind of profanity. She spat words at the crowd, and oaths fell like toads from her lips. We below heard the crowd and the lady; but we saw only the principals of the combat until ... until the lady, disregarding the ethics of the game, flew in with screwed face, caught the coming arm of the big man, and pinioned it beneath her own.
"'Elp, 'elp, some of yeh!" she cried. Her husband fastened on to his enemy, tore at his collar with wild fingers, opened his mouth, and tried to bite. The big man struggled with both. The bulky form of the lady was swung back and forth by his cunning arm; and oneheard the crowd stand by, press in, rush back, in rhythm to the movements of the battlers. A moment later the lady was down and out. A sudden blow at the breast from the great elbow. I heard her fall.... I heard the gasp of the crowd.
Here and there the blank street was suddenly struck to life. Warm blinds began to wink. One heard the creak of opening windows, and voices: "Why doncher separate 'em? Why cancher shut that plurry row?" With the new light one saw the crowd against a ground of chocolate hue. Here and there a cigarette picked out a face, glowing like an evil eye. All else was dank darkness.
Round and round the combatants went. Two well-set youngsters made a dash upon them, only to be swung from their feet into the crowd. They kicked, twisted, jerked, panted, now staggered a few paces, now stood still, straining silently. Now they were down, now up. Another woman's voice wailed across the unhappy water in the mournful accent of Belfast: "Fr-r-rank, Fr-rank, where arrre ye? Oh, Fr-rank, Fr-rank—ye br-reak me hear-r-t!"
Then Chuck Lightfoot, known also as The Panther, The Croucher, and The Prize Packet, shifted from my side. I looked at him. "Fed up on this, I am. Wait here." He vaulted from the deck of the tug to the landing-stage, strode up the gang-plank, and was lost in the long shaft of darkness.
From above one heard a noise—a nasty noise: the sound of a man's head being banged on the pavement. Frank's wife screamed: "Separate 'em! He's killin' 'im! Why don't some one do somethin'?"
Another woman cried: "I'll be sick. Stop 'em! I daresn't look."
Then everything stopped. We heard a low hum, swelling swiftly to a definite cry. The word "dead—dead—dead" flitted from mouth to mouth. Some turned away. Others approached as near as they dared,retreating fearfully when a push from behind drove them forward....
But nobody was dead. Into the centre light had dashed Chuck Lightfoot. Chuck Lightfoot was a pugilistic manager. He was a lot of other things besides. He was the straightest boy I have ever met in that line. He had every high animal quality that a man should have. And he had a cold nerve that made men twice his size afraid of him.
The fight was stopped. Two blows from Chuck had stopped it. The crowd gathered round and gave first aid to both combatants, while Chuck faced them, and waited for assaults. We climbed up and stood with him, but nothing happened. Tragedy is so often imminent in this region, and so often trickles away to rubbish. The crowd was vociferous and gestic. It swooped about us, and inquired, conjectured, disapproved, condemned.
Then came several blue helmets and swift dispersal.
The affair was over.