Oh, how happy we all should be,If none of us ever drank anything stronger than tea.For how can a man hope to write a beautiful songWhen he is hanging round the public-houses all day long?
Oh, how happy we all should be,If none of us ever drank anything stronger than tea.For how can a man hope to write a beautiful songWhen he is hanging round the public-houses all day long?
Oh, how happy we all should be,If none of us ever drank anything stronger than tea.For how can a man hope to write a beautiful songWhen he is hanging round the public-houses all day long?
Oh, how happy we all should be,
If none of us ever drank anything stronger than tea.
For how can a man hope to write a beautiful song
When he is hanging round the public-houses all day long?
"Spring Onions" apart, Stepney is a home for all manner of queer characters, full of fire and salt; from Peter the Painter, of immortal memory, to those odd-job men who live well by being Jacks of all trades, and masters of them, too.
There are my good friends, Johnny, the scavenger, Mr. 'Opkinson, the cat's-meat man, 'Erb, the boney, Fat Fred, who keeps the baked-potatocan, and that lovable personality "My Uncle Toby," gate-man at one of the docks.
There's 'Orace, too, the minder. Ever met him? Ever employed him? Probably not, but if you live near any poor market-place, and ever have occasion for his services, I cordially recommend him.
'Orace is the best minder east of the Pump. What does he mind? Your business, not his. Haven't you ever seen him at it in the more homely quarters? At a penny a time, it's good hunting; and 'Orace is the only man I know who blesses certain recent legislation.
His profession sprang from the Children Act, which debarred parents from taking children into public-houses. Now, there are thousands of respectable couples who like to have a quiet—or even a noisy—drink on market-night; and the effect of the Act was that they had to go in singly, one taking a drink while the other stood outside and held the baby.
There was 'Orace's opportunity, and he took it. Why not let father and mother take their drink together, while 'Orace sang lullabies to his Majesty?
Admirable idea. It caught on, for 'Orace has away with babies. He can talk baby guff by the hour, and in the whole of his professional career he has never had to mind a baby that did not "take" to him on sight.
The fee is frequently more than a penny. If the old dad wants to stay for a bit, he will stand 'Orace a drink (under the rose) and a pipe of 'baccy. Sundays and holidays are his best days. He selects his public-house, on the main road always, and works it all day. Often he has five or six kiddies at a time to protect; and he gave me a private tip towards success as a "minder": always carry a number of bright things in your pockets—nails, pearl buttons, bits of coloured chalk, or, best of all, a piece of putty.
Outside his regular pitch, the public-house owns a horse-trough, but as no horses now draw up, the trough is dry, and in this he places his half-dozen or so protégés, out of danger and as happy as you please.
Then there's Artie, the copper's nark. What shall be said of Artie? Shall I compare him to a summer's day? No, I think not; rather to a cobwebbed Stepney twilight. I don't commend Artie. Indeed, I have as little regard for him as I have for those poisonous weeds that float on theThames near Greenwich at flood. He is a thoroughly disagreeable person, with none of the acid qualities of the really bad man or the firelight glow of commonplace sinners like ourselves. He is incapable of following any other calling. He has been, from boyhood, mixed up with criminal gangs, but he has not the backbone necessary for following them on their enterprises. Always he has wanted to feel safe; so he cringes at the feet of officialism. He is hated by all—by the boys whose games he springs and by the unscrupulous police who employ him. His rewards are small: a few pence now and then, an occasional drink, and a tolerant eye towards his own little misbehavings.
Often the police are puzzled as to how Artie gets his information. If you were to ask him, he would become Orientally impassive.
"Ah, you'd like to know, wouldn't yer?"
But the truth is that he does not himself know. In a poor district—Walworth, Hoxton, or Notting Dale—everybody talks; and it is in these districts that Artie works. He is useless in big criminal affairs; he can only gather and report information on the petty doings of his associates. The moment any small burglary is planned, two orthree people know about it, for the small burglar is always maladroit and ill-instructed in his methods, and is bound to confide in some one. Artie is always about like a predatory bird to snatch up crumbs of other people's business.
Are you married, and were you married at a Registry Office? If so, it's certain that you've met my dear old friend. Stepney Syd, the Congratulator, one of our most earnest war-workers; as "unwearied" as Lady Dardy Dinkum.
Congratulations, spoken at the right moment, in the right way, to the right people, are a paying proposition. The war has made no difference in the value of those mellifluous syllables, unless it be in an upward direction. It's a soft job, too. Syd never works after three in the afternoon. He cannot, because his work is the concluding touch to the marriage service. It consists in hanging about registry-offices—that in Covent Garden is very popular with young people in a hurry—and waiting until a cab arrives with prospective bride and bridegroom. When they leave, Syd is there to open the door for them, and respectfully offer felicitations; and so fatuous and helpless is man when he has taken a woman for life that he dare not ignore this happy omen.
Thus, Syd comes home every time on a good thing, and, by careful watching of the weekly papers in the Free Library, and putting two and two together, he contrives, like some of our politicians, to anticipate events, and to be where the good things are.
Strolling round Montagu Street the other night, I met, in one of the little Russian cafés, a man who pitched me a tale of woe—a lean, ferrety little man, with ferrety eyes and fingers that urged me to button my overcoat and secure all pockets.
But I was shocked to discover that he was an honest man. Diamonds and honesty seldom walk hand-in-hand, and precious stones and virtue do not yet publicly kiss each other; and he talked so much of diamonds that my first apprehensions were perhaps justified. I learnt, however, that his was a sad case. He was a diamond-cutter by trade, and in those war days one might as usefully have diamonds in Amsterdam (as Maudi Darrell's song went) as have them in London.
I had not before met a man who so casually juggled with the symbols of revue-girlhood, so I bought him some more vodka and tea-and-lemon, and led him on to talk. Stones to thevalue of £20,000 passed through his hands every day, but none of them stuck. This fact greatly refreshed my dimming faith in human nature, until he qualified it by adding that it wasn't worth a cutter's while to steal. Every worker in the trade is known to every branch, and he would have no second chance.
Apprenticeship to the trade of diamond-cutting costs £200: and, once out of his indentures, the apprentice must join the Union, for it would be useless for him, however proficient in his business, to attempt to obtain a post without his Union ticket.
The diamond-mechanic earns anything from £3 to £8 per week. The work calls for a very considerable knowledge of the characters of stones, for very deft fingers, and for exceptionally shrewd judgment; since every diamond or brilliant, however minute, has sixty-four facets, each of which has to be made and polished on a lathe.
The stones are handed out in the workshop practically haphazard, and in the event of the loss of a stone, no disturbance is caused. The staff simply look for it; the floor of the shop is swept up with a fine broom, and the dust sifteduntil it is found. The explanation of this laxity is the International Diamond Cutters' Union.
In the process of diamond-cutting, of course, the stone loses about 60 per cent. of its weight; and the cutter told me that the filings that come from the stone, mixed with the oil of the lathe, make the finest lubricant for a razor-strop. The making of his smooth cheeks was the perfect razor sharpened with diamond filings!
Before we parted, he showed me casually a green diamond. This is the most rare form of stone, and there are only six known examples in the world. No, he didn't steal it. It had just been handed to him for setting, and he was carrying it in his waistcoat-pocket in the careless manner of all stone-dealers.
After he and a sure thousand pounds had vanished into the night, I sat for awhile in the café listening to the chatter of the cigarette-girls of the quarter.
It was all of war. Of Stefan, who had been repatriated; of Abramovitch, who had evaded service by bolting to Ireland with a false green form for which he had paid £100; of Sergius, who had been hiding in a cellar.
When one thinks of cigarette-girls one thinks atonce of Marion Crawford'sCigarette-maker's Romanceand of Martin Harvey's super-sentimental performance in that play, so dear to the Streatham flapper. But Sonia Karavitch, though soaked in the qualities of her race—dark beauty, luxurious curls, brooding temper, and spiritual melancholy—would, I fear, repel those who only know her under the extravagantly refining rays of the limelight. But those who love humanity in the raw will love her.
Sonia Karavitch is seventeen. She wears a black frock, with many sprigs of red ribbon at her neck and in her raven hair. Her fingers are stained brown with tobacco; but, though she has heavy eyes and lounges languorously, like a drowsy cat in the sunshine, she works harder than most other factory-girls.
From six o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night she is at her table, rolling by the thousand those hand-made cigarettes which command big prices in Piccadilly. When she speaks she has a lazy voice with a curious lisp, and it is full of sadness.
Yet she is not sad. She has a pleasant little home in one of the big tenements, where she lives with her mother and little brother, and, in herown demonstrative way, is happy. The harder she works, the more money there is for luxuries for the little brother. Often of an evening her friends come home with her, and drink tea-and-lemon with her, and make music.
Sonia Karavitch is very shy, and never mixes with the folk who are not of her own colony. She was born in Stepney of Russian parents, and she never goes out of Stepney. And why should she? For in the half-dozen streets where she lives her daily life she can speak the language of her parents, can buy clothes such as her mother wore in Odessa, and can find all those little touches that mean home to the homeless or the exiled.
Every morning she goes straight to the factory; at noon she goes home to dinner; and in the evening she goes straight home again. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons—which is her Sunday, for Sonia is of Jewish faith—she takes a walk in Whitechapel High Street, because, you see, there is much life in Whitechapel High Street; there are her compatriots, and there are street-organs, and violets are a penny a bunch.
When she has had a good week she sometimes takes her mother and brother for kvass to one ofthe many Russian restaurants in Osborn Street and Little Montagu Street.
Sometimes you see Sonia Karavitch at a table, sipping her tea, and listening to the talk, and you may wonder why that sad, far-away look in her eyes. She is not in Stepney. Her soul has flown to her native land—to the steppes, to the cold airs of Russia, whither a certain Russian lad, who used to work by her side in the cigarette factory in Osborn Street, was dispatched by a repatriation order.
But then she remembers mother and little brother, and stops her dreamings, and hurries on to work.
Many wild folk have sat in these cafés and discoursed on the injustices of civilization; and at one time private presses in the neighbourhood gave forth inflammatory sheets bearing messages from international warriors in the cause of freedom.
If ever you are tired of the solemn round of existence, don't take a holiday at the seaside, don't go to the war. Edit an anarchist news-sheet, and your life will be full of quick perils and alarms.
Another of my Stepney friends is Jane, the flower-girl, who tramps every day from Stepneyto Covent Garden, and sells her stock from a pitch near Leicester Square. Here's another ardent war-worker.
Some worthy people may not think that the selling of violets comes properly under the fine exclusive label of War Work; but these are the neurotics whose only idea of doing their bit is that of twisting their soiling fingers about anything that carries a message of grace; who fume at a young man because he isn't in khaki, and, when he is in uniform, kill him with a look because he isn't in hospital blue, and, when he is in hospital, regard him askance because he isn't eager to go back.
"Flowers!" they snort or wheeze. "Fiddling with flowers in war-time! It ought to be stopped. Look at the waste of labour. Look at the press on transport. Will the people never realize," etc.
Yet, good troglodytes, because the world is at war, shall we then wipe from the earth everything that links us, however lightly, to God—and save Germany the trouble? Must everything be lead and steel? Old Man—dost thou think, because thou art old, that glory and loveliness have passed away with the corroding of thy bones?Nay, youth shall still take or make its pleasure; fair girls shall still adorn their limbs with silks, and flowers shall still be sweet to the nose.
Old Man—on many occasions when I could get no food—not even war-bread—the sight and smell of bunches of violets have furnished sustenance for mind and body. So fill thy belly, if thou wilt, with the waxy potato; put the Army cheese where the soldier puts the pudding; shovel into thy mouth the frozen beef and offal that may renew thy energies for further war-work; but, if there be any grace of God still left in thee, if there be any virtue, any charity—leave, for those who are shielding thy senescent body, the flower-girls about Piccadilly Circus on a May morning.
"Vi'lerts! Swee' Vi'lerts! Pennyer bunch!"
Good morning, Jane! How sweet you and your violets look in the tangle of traffic that laces and interlaces itself about Alfred Gilbert's Mercury.
Morning by morning, fair or foggy, she stands by the fountain; and if you give her more than a passing glance you will note that her tumbled hair is of just the right shade of red, and in her eyes are the very violets that she holds to yourindifferent nose, and under her lucent skin beat the imperious pulses of youth.
Jane is fourteen, and Jane is always smiling; not because she is fourteen, but because it's such fun to be alive and to be selling flowers. Indeed, she looks herself like a little posy, sweet and demure. Times may be bad, but they are not reflected in Jane's appearance.
Of education she has only what the Council School gave her in the odd hours when she choose to attend; of religion she has none, but she has a philosophy of her own, which, in a sentence, is To Get All The Fun You Can Out of Things.
That's why Jane's smile is a smile that certain people look for every morning as they alight from their bus in the Circus. But you must not imagine that Jane is good in the respectable sense of the word. Let anyone annoy her, or try to "dish" her of one of her customers. Then, when it comes to back-chat, Jane can more than hold her own in the matter of language; and once I saw an artillery officer's face turn livid during a discussion between her and a rival flower-girl.
The war has hit Jane very badly. The young bloods who frequented her stall in the old days, and bought the most expensive buttonholes everymorning, are now in khaki, and a thoughtless Army Order forbids an officer to decorate his tunic with a spray of carnations or a moss-rose.
There are only the old bounders remaining, and their custom depends so much on such a number of things—the morning's news, the fact that they are not ten years younger, the weather, and the state of their digestions.
Jane always reads the paper before she starts work, because, as she says, then you know what to expect. She doesn't believe in meeting trouble halfway, but she believes in being prepared for it. When there's good news, stout old gentlemen will buy a bunch of violets for themselves, and perhaps a cluster of blossoms for the typist. But when the news is bad, nobody is in the mood for flowers. They want to band themselves together and tell one another how awful it is; which, as Jane says, is all wrong.
"If they'd only buy a bunch of violets and stick it in their coats, other people would feel better by looking at them, and they'd forget the bad news in the jolly old smell in their buttonhole."
Yes, Jane's fourteen years have given her much wisdom, and she is doing as fine war-work as any admiral or field-marshal.
While in Stepney we mustn't forget good Mrs. Joplin. Mrs. Joplin lives up a narrow court of menacing aspect, and in her window is a printed card, bearing the cryptic legend—"Mangling Done Here"—which, to an American friend of mine, suggested that atrocities of a German kind were going on downstairs. But I calmed his fears by assuring him that Mrs. Joplin's business card was a simple indication of her willingness to receive from her neighbours bundles of newly-washed clothes, and put them through a machine called a mangle, from which they were discharged neatly pressed and folded. The remuneration for this service is usually but a few coppers—beer-money, nothing more; so to procure the decencies of existence Mrs. Joplin lets her basement rooms for—What's that? Yes, I daresay you've had a few pewter half-crowns and florins passed on you lately, but what's that to do with me—or Mrs. Joplin? Do you want me to suggest that good Mrs. Joplin is a twister; a snide-merchant? Never let it be said. Good Mrs. Joplin, unlike so many of her neighbours, has never seen the inside of a police-court, much less a prison.
Speaking of prisons, it was in Stepney that I was told how to carry myself if ever I came withinthe grip of the law on frequent occasions. The English prison is not an establishment to which one turns with anticipation of happiness; but there is one prison which is as good as a home of rest for those suffering from the pain of the world. There is but one condition of eligibility: you must be a habitual criminal.
If you fulfilled that condition, you were dispatched to the Camp Hill Detention Prison in the Isle of Wight.
A most comfortable affair, this Camp Hill. It stands in pleasant grounds, near Newport; and the walls are not the grey, scowling things that enclose Holloway, or Reading, or Wandsworth, but walls of warm brown stone, such as any good fellow of reputable fame might build about his mansion. Close-shaven lawns and flower-beds delight the eye, and the cells are roomy apartments with real windows. The guests do not dine in solitude; they are marched together to the dining-hall, and there nourished, not with skilly or stew, with its hunk of bread and a pewter platter, but with meat and plum-duff, sometimes fish, greenstuffs, and cocoa. This, of course, in peace-time; the menu has no doubt suffered variations in these latter days. The tables are covered. Afterthe meal the good fellows may sit for a few minutes and enjoy a pipe of tobacco, even as the respectable citizen. A fair number of marks for good behaviour carries with it the privilege of smoking after the night meal as well, and one of the most severe punishments is the docking of this smoking privilege.
Also, a canteen is provided. Not only do they wallow in luxury; they are paid for it. Twopence a day is given to each prisoner for exceptional conduct, and one penny of this may be spent at the canteen. This is by way of payment for work done—the work being of a much lighter kind than that given to ordinary "second division" prisoners. In cases where conduct fulfils every expectation of the authorities, the good lad is rewarded, every six months, with a stripe. Six stripes entitle the holder to a cash reward, half of which he may spend, the other half being banked. The canteen sells sweets, mineral waters, cigarettes, apples, oranges, nuts etc. Those inclined to the higher forms of nourishment may use the library. There are current magazines, novels of popular "healthy" writers (it would be unfair to give their names; they might not appreciate the epithet), and—uplifting thought—the works ofSpencer, Huxley, Darwin, and some French highbrows.
On special occasions bioscope shows of an educative kind are given. Oh, I do love my virtue, but I wish I were a habitual criminal. Why wasn't I born in Stepney, and born a vagabond?
Whether the prison is still running on the old lines I know not. Most likely the British habitual convicts have been served with ejectment notices to make room for German prisoners. I wouldn't wonder.
"I'll learn yeh, y' little wretch!"
"Oowh! Don't—don't!"
The lady, savagely wielding a decayed carpet-beater, bent over the shrinking form of the child—a little storm of short skirts and black hair. Her arm ached and her face steamed, but she continued to shower blows wherever she could get them in, until suddenly the storm limply subsided into a small figure which doubled up and fell.
A step sounded in the doorway, and the lady looked up, frayed at the edges and panting. A small, slight man, in semi-official dress, stood just inside the room, which gave directly on to a byway of Homerton.
"Na then, Feet—mind yer dirty boots on my carpet, cancher? What's the——"
"N.S.P.C.C.," replied Feet. He stooped over the child, lifted her, and set her on a slippery sofa. "Had my eye on you for some time. Thought there were something dicky with this child."
"'Ere, look 'ere—I mean, can't 'er muvver 'it 'er——"
"Steady, please. Let me warn you——"
The lady threatened with glances, but Kids' Man met them.
She fumed. "Ow! You waltz in, do yeh? Well, strikes me yeh'll waltz out quicker'n yeh came in. 'Ere—Arfer!" Her raucous voice scraped up the narrow stairway leading from the room, and in answer came a misty voice, suggesting revelries by night. The lady roared again: "Ar-ferr! Get up an' come daown. 'Ere's a little swab insultin' yer wife! Kids' Man insultin' yer wife!"
Kids' Man made no move, but stood over the sofa with sober face, ministering to the heavily breathing bundle. Overhead came bumps and a prayer for delivery from women.
Then on the lower step of the stairway appeared a symbol of Aurora in velveteen breeches and a shirt of indeterminate colour. His braces hung dolefully at the rear as he bleared on the situation. His furry head moved from side to side. "Wodyeh want me t'do?"
"Cosh 'im! Insultin' yer wife!"
He stared. Then his lip moved and he grinned. He hitched up his trousers, belted them with braces, and expectorated on both hands with gusto. "Git aout, else I'll split yer faice!"
No answer. "Righto!" He descended from the stair, and, hands down, fists closed, chin protruded, advanced on the bending Inspector with that slow, insidious movement proper to street-fighters. "Won't git aout, woncher? Grrr—yeh!"
Kids' Man looked up and met him with a steady stare. But the stare annoyed him, so he lifted up his fist and smote Kids' Man between the eyes. Then things happened. He towered over the Inspector. "Want another?" The Inspector lifted a short and apparently muscleless arm.
Bk! Aurora reeled as the fist met his jaw, and was followed by a swift one under the ear. For a moment astonishment seemed to hold him as he bleared at the slight figure; then he seemed about to burst with wrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The wife screamed for aid.
"Aoutside—come on!" He shoved Kids' Man before him into the walk, which, torpid a moment ago, now flashed with life and movement.Quickly the auditorium was filled with a moist, unlovely crowd of sloppy rags and towzled heads. While Kids' Man ministered to his nose, Arfer hitched his trousers, fingered his shirt-sleeves, and talked in staccato to his seconds, about a dozen in number. The crowd grunted and grinned. It seemed evident that Kids' Man was about to get it in the neck. One or two went to his side as he quietly turned back his sleeves, not for purposes of encouragement, but merely in order to preserve the correct niceties of the scrap.
A light tap on the body from either party, and then more things happened. "Go it, Arfer, flatten 'im! Cosh 'im! Rip 'im back, Arfer. Give 'im naughty-naughty, Arfer!"
But, as the crowd scraped and shuffled this way and that, they gave a panicky clearing to a spry retreat by Kids' Man. He was done for; Arfer was chasing him. They capered and chi-iked. Then, with a smart turn, he landed beautifully on the point, and sent the pursuing Arfer flat to the ground. The crowd murmured and oathfully exhorted Arfer to fink what he was doin' of. Flatten the Kids' Man—that was his job. They met again, and this time the Society received one on the mouth and another on thenose. He sat heavily down, and his seconds flashed wet handkerchiefs. The crowd cheered. "'Ad enough?"
But with a sudden spurt he came up again. His right landed on Arfer's nose, a natty upper-cut followed it. He got in another with his right, and pressed his man. The lady screamed, and disregarding the ethics of the ring, splurged in and seized the Society's coat-tails. But the crowd begged her to desist. Then the child, who, with the toughness of her class, had found her legs again, flitted fearfully about the fringe of the crowd.
"Wade in, mister! 'It the old woman—fetch 'er a swipe across the snitch!"
Now Kids' Man began to take an interest in the affair. Dodging a swinging blow of his lumbering opponent, he got in a half-arm jab. They closed, and embraced each other, and swayed, and the crowd chanted "Dear Old Pals." For a moment they strained; then Kids' Man lifted his enemy bodily held him, and with a peculiar twist dropped him. He lay still....
A murmur of wonder swelled quickly to a broad roar. The crowd surged in, squirming and hustling. For a moment it seemed that Kids' Manwould get torn. It was just a hair's-breadth question between lynching and triumphal chairing. The sporting spirit prevailed, and: "Raaay! Good on yeh, mate! Well done th' S'ciety!" The lads swung in and gathered admiringly around the victor, who tenderly caressed a damaged beetroot of a face, while half a dozen helpers impeded each other's efforts to render first aid to the prostrate Arfer.
"Where's the blankey twicer? Lemme git 'old of 'im. Lemme git 'old of 'im!" implored the lady. But she was no longer popular, and they hustled her aside, so that in impotent rage she smote her prostrate husband with her foot for failing to uphold her honour before a measly little Kids' Man what she could have torn in two wiv one hand.
"Well, 'e's gotter nerve, ain't 'e?"
"Firs' chap ever I knew stand up t'old Arfer. Fac'!"
"Yerce—'e's—e's gotter nerve!"
"Tell yeh what I say, boys—three cheers for th' Kids' Man!"
And as the bruised and discoloured Kids' Man gripped the hand of Orphan Dora and led her, brave with new importance, from the Walk toheadquarters, a round of beery cheering made sweet music in their rear.
"Well, fancy a little chap like that.... Well, 'e's gotter blasted nerve!"
* * * * *
The Kids' Man. That is his title—used sometimes affectionately and sometimes bitterly. He is the children's champion, and often he is met with curses, and that plea of parenthood which is supposed to justify all manner of gross and unnameable abominations: "Can't a farver do what he likes wiv his own child?"
The Society employs two hundred and fifty Inspectors, whose work is to watch over the welfare of the children in their allotted district. But, since most ill-treatment takes place behind closed doors, it is difficult for an outsider to obtain direct evidence, and neighbours, even when they know that children are being starved and daily tortured, are shy of lodging information, lest it may lead to the publicity of the police-court and the newspapers, and subsequently to open permanent enmity from the people next whom they have to live.
The Kids' Man is usually an old Army or Navy man, accustomed to making himself heard,and able to hold his own. The chief qualities for such a post are: a real love of children; tact and knowledge of men; and ability to deal with a hostile reception. It is by no means pleasant, as you have seen, to pay a warning visit to a house up a narrow alley, whose inhabitants form something of a clan or freemasonry lodge.
The motto of the Society, however, is persuasion. Prosecutions are extremely distasteful, and are only used when all other means have failed. In any case that comes to the Inspector's knowledge, his first thought is the children's well-being. If they are being starved, he provides them with food, clothes, bedding and baths, or sees that the parish does so without any of the delays incident to parish charity. Then he has a quiet talk with the parents, and gives a warning. Usually this is enough. In cases where the neglect is due to lack of work, he is sometimes an employment agency, and finds work for the father. But, if necessary, there are more warnings, and then, with great reluctance, an appearance in court is called for.
Cruelty is of two kinds—active and passive. The passive cruelty is the cruelty of neglect—lack of proper food, clothing, sanitation, etc. The other kind—the active cruelty of a diabolicalnature—comes curiously enough, not so much from the lower, but from the upper classes. It is seldom that the rough navvy is deliberately cruel to his children; but Inspectors can tell you some appalling stories of torture inflicted on children by leisured people of means and breeding. Among their convictions are doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and many women of position.
There was one terrible case of a woman in county society—you will remember her Cornish name—who had been guilty of atrocious cruelty to a little girl of twelve. The Kids' Man called. The woman maintained that a mother had a perfect right to correct her own child. She called the child and fondled it to prove that rumour of tortures was wrong. But the Kids' Man knows children; and the look in the child's eyes told him of terrorizing. He demanded a medical examination.
The case was proved in court. A verdict of "Guilty" was given. And the punishment for this fair degenerate—£50 fine! The punishment for the Kids' Man was a kind of social ostracism. There lies the difficulty of the work. The woman's position had saved her.
The Kids' Man needs to have his eyes openeverywhere and at every time for signs of suffering among the little ones. And often, where a father won't listen to advice from him, he is found amenable to suggestions from Mrs. Inspector.
In every big town in this country you will find the N.S.P.C.C. bureau, but, in spite of their efforts, too much cruelty is going on that might be stopped if the British people, as a race, were not too fond of "minding their own business" and shutting their eyes to everyday evils.
If you still think England a Christian and enlightened country, you had better accompany an N.S.P.C.C. man on his daily round. Before you do so, inspect the record at their offices. Read the verbatim reports of some of their cases. Look at their "museum" which Mr. Parr, the secretary, will show you; a museum more hideous than any collection of inquisition relics or than anything in the Tower. You will then know something of the hideous conditions of child-life in "this England of ours," and you will be prepared for what you shall see on your tour with the Kids' Man.
What does the Cockney's mind first register when, far from home, he visualizes the London that he loves with the casual devotion of his type? To the serious tourist London is the shrine of England's history; to the ordinary artist, who sees life in line and colour, it is a city of noble or delicate "bits"; to the provincial it is a playground; to the business man a market; but to the Cockney it is one big club, odourous of the goodly fellowship that blossoms from contact with human-kind.
"Far from the madding crowd" may express the longings of the modern Simeon Stylites, but your Cockney is no Simeon. He doesn't pray to be put upon an island where the crowds are few. The thicker the crowd, the more elbows that delve into his ribs, the hotter the steam of human-kind, the happier he is. Far from the madding crowd be blowed! Man's place, he holds, is among his fellows; and he sniffs with contempt at thiswidespread desire to escape from other people. To him it is a sign of an unhealthy mind, if not pure blasphemy.
So, when he thinks of London, he does not think of a city of palaces, or serene architectural triumphs; of a huckster's mart or a playground. At the word "London" he sees people: the crowds in the Strand, in Walworth Road, Lavender Hill, Whitechapel Road, Camden Town High Street.
Your moods may be various, and London will respond. You may work, you may idly dream away the hours, or you may actively enjoy yourself in play; but if you wish that supreme enjoyment—the enjoyment of other people—then London affords opportunities in larger measure than any city that I know.
I discovered the magic and allure of crowds when I was fourteen years old and worked as office-boy in those filthy alleys marked in the Postal Directory as "E.C." Streets and crowds became my refreshment and entertainment then, and my palate is not yet blunted to their savour. I do not want the flowery mead or the tree-covered lane or the insect-ridden glade—at least, not for long; and I hate that dreadful hollow behind thelittle wood. Give me six o'clock in the evening and a walk from the City to Oxford Circus, through the soft Spring or the darkling Autumn, with festive feet whispering all around you, and your heart filled with that grey-green romance which is London.
Once out of Newgate Street and across Holborn Viaduct I was happy, for I was, so to speak, in a foreign country; so wholly different were the people of Holborn from the people of Cheapside. The crowds of the City had always to me, a mean, craven air about them. They walked homeward with lagging steps and worn faces. They seemed always preoccupied with paltry problems. They carried the stamp of their environment: a dusty market-place, in which things made by more adept hands and brains are passed from wholesale place to wholesale place with sorry bargaining on the odd halfpenny.
But West and West Central were a pleasuance of the finer essences, and involuntarily body and soul assumed there a transient felicity of gait. One walked and thought suavely. There were noble shops, brilliant theatres, dainty restaurants, highways whose sole business was pleasure, rent with gay lights and oh! so many delightful people. Atrestaurant and theatre doors one might pause pensively and touch finger-tips, as it were, with rose-leaf grace and beauty and fine comradeship; a refreshing exercise after encounters with the sordid and the uncouth in Gracechurch Street. Then, when the hoofs clattered and the motors hooted and the whistles blew, and streets were drenched with festal light and festal folk, I was, I felt, abroad. Figure to yourself that you are walking through the streets of Teheran, or Stamboul, or Moscow, surrounded by strange bazaars and people who seem to have stepped from some book of magic so far removed are they from your daily interests. So did I feel as I walked down Piccadilly. It was suffocating to think that there were so many streets to explore, so many types to meet and to know. I wanted then to make heaps and heaps of friends—not, I must confess, for friendship—but just for the sake of meeting people who did interesting and gracious things, and for the sake of knowing that Ihada host of friends. The plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, the lights of the Alhambra and Empire seen through the green trees of Leicester Square, the procession of 'buses along Holborn and Oxford Streets, the alluring teashops of Piccadilly and thescornful opulence of the hotels—these things sank into me and became part of me.
My way to the City lay through Leicester Square, and the morning crowd in that quarter bears for me still the same charm. On a bright Spring day it might be Paris. There is a sense of space and sparkle about it. The little milliners' girls, in piquant frocks, evoke memories of Louise, and the crowding curls on their cheeks waft a perfume of youth-time lyrics, chiming softly against the more strident and repulsively military garb of the girl porters and doorkeepers. The cleaners, bustling about the steps of the music-halls, throw adumbrations of entertainment on the morning streets. People are leisurely busy in an agreeable way—not the huckstering E.C. way.
In Piccadilly Circus there is the same sense of light and song among the crowds emerging from the Tube. The shops are decked in all the colours of the Maytime, and not one little workgirl but pauses to throw a mute appeal to the posturing silks and laces and pray that the lily-wristed, wanton damsel of Fortune will turn a hand in her direction.
But in the City, as I have said, there is little of this delight to be found, either at morning, noonor night. The typical crowd of this district may be seen at London Bridge, where, from eight to half-past ten in the morning and from half-past five to half-past seven in the evening, the dispirited toilers swarm to or from work. Indeed, it is not a crowd: it is acortège, marching to the obsequies of hope and fear. It is a funeral march of marionettes. Here are no gay colours; no smiles; no persiflage. All is sombre. Even the typists and the little workgirls make no effort towards bright raiment; all is dingy and soiled, not with the clean dirt that hangs about the barges and wharves on the river, but with the mustiness of old ledgers and letter-files. Listless in the morning and taciturn in the evening are these people; and to watch them for an hour from the windows of the Bridge House Hotel is to suffer an attack of spiritual dyspepsia. For, among them, are men who have crossed that bridge twice daily for thirty years, walking always on the same side, always at the same pace, and arriving at the other end at precisely the same minute. There are men who began that daily journey with bright boyish faces, clean collars, and their first bowler hats, brave with the importance of working in the City. Their hearts were fired with dreams andambition. They had heard tales of office-boys who, by industry, had been taken eventually into partnership. They received their first rise. Later, they achieved the romantic riches of thirty shillings a week. They made the acquaintance of a girl in their suburban High Street. They married. And now, at forty-five, all ambition gone, they are working in the same murky corner of the same office, and maintaining wife and child on three pounds a week. Their trousers are frayed and bag at the knees. Their coats are without nap or grace. Two collars a week suffice. Gone are the shining dreams. They have "settled down," without being conscious of the fact, and will make that miserable journey, with other sombre and silent phantoms, until the end. Verily, the London Bridge crowd of respectables is the most tragic of all London crowds, and the bridge itself avia dolorosa.
I do not know why work in the City should produce a more deadening effect on the souls of the workers than work in other quarters, but the fact that it does is recognized by all students of Labour conditions. I have worked in all quarters, and have noticed a curious change of outlook when I moved from the City to Fleet Street, orfrom Fleet Street to Piccadilly. You shall notice it, too, in the faces of the lunch-time crowds. East of St. Paul's, the note is apathy. Coming westward, just to Fleet Street, you perceive a change. Here boys and girls, men and women, seem to take an interest in things; one understands that they like their work. They do not regard it as a mere routine, to be dragged through somehow until the clock releases them.
A similar study in crowd psychology awaits you at the Tube stations in the early hours of the evening, when the rush is on. With elbows wedged into your ribs, and strange hot breaths pouring down your neck, you need all the serenity you have stored against such contingencies; and the attitude of the other people about you can mitigate your distress or enhance it. The City and South London crowd is not the kind of crowd that can bear its own troubles cheerfully, or help others to bear theirs. I would never wish to go on a day's holiday with any of its people. Their composite frame of mind is one of weak anger, expressive of "Why isn't Something Done? What's the use of going on like this?"
More comely is the St. James's Park or Westminster crowd. From five to half-past six thesestations receive a steady stream of sweet and merry little girls from the mushroom Government Departments that have spawned all about this quarter. It is girls, girls, girls, all the way, with the feeble and the aged of the male species toiling behind.
On the Bakerloo you find a crowd that is—well, "rorty" is the only word. The people here are mostly southbound for the Elephant and Castle; and you know the Elephant and Castle and its warm, impetuous life. There are bold youths who have not fallen, like their fathers, to the cajolery of a collar-and-cuff job in the City, but have taken up the work that offers the best pecuniary reward. Grimy youths they are, but full of vitality, and they pour down the staircase in a Niagara of humanity.
An excellent centre for observing the varying moods of the evening crowd is Villiers Street, that gentle slope from which you may reach Charing Cross Station, the Hampstead Tube, the District Railway, or the Embankment trams. It is a finely mixed company, for, as any Londoner will tell you, the residents of the hundred suburbs differ from one another in manner, accent and appearance, even as the natives of differentcontinents. Those who are using the Hampstead Tube are sharply marked from those who are taking the Embankment car to Clapham Junction; while those who are journeying on the South-Eastern to Croydon have probably never heard of Upton Park, whither the District will carry others. There are well-dressed people and ill-dressed people; some who are going home to soup, fish, asouffléand coffee, with wine and liqueurs; and some who are going home to "tea," at about eight o'clock—bread-and-margarine and bloater paste, with a pint of tea, or, occasionally, a bit of tripe and onions. There are people in a mad hurry, and others who move in aloof idleness. And above them all stand the stalwart Colonials, waiting until 6.30, when the bars shall open, airily inspecting the troops of girls and comparing notes.
"Say now, jes' watch here. Here comes a real Fanny."
"Ah, gwan. I ain' got no time for Fannies. I finished wid 'em. Gimme beer, every time."
I have often wanted to make a song of Villiers Street, but I have never been able to catch just the essence of its atmosphere. I am sure, though, that the modern orchestra offers opportunities forone of our new composers to embrace it in an overture. No effort has been made, so far as I know, to interpret in music the noisy soul of the London crowds. Elgar's "Cockaigne" overture and Percy Grainger's "Handel in the Strand" were both retrospective in spirit, and the real thing yet remains to be done. It has been done on the Continent by Suppé ("Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna"), by Sibelius in his "Finlandia," by Massenet in his "Southern Town," and by Dvorák in "Carneval Roman." I await with eagerness a "Morning, Noon and Night at Charing Cross," scored by a born Cockney.
The origins of Saturday night, as a social institution, are obscure. No doubt a little research would discover them to the earnest seeker, but I am temperamentally averse from anything like research. It is tedious in process and disappointing in result. Successful research means grasping at the reality and dropping the romance.
The outstanding fact about Saturday night is that it is an exclusively British institution. Neither America nor the Continent knows its precious joys. It is one of the few British institutions that reconcile me to being an islander. It is a festival that is observed with the same casual ritual in the London slums and in Northumberland mining villages; in Scottish hills and in the byways of the Black Country; in Camden Town High Street and in the hamlets of the Welsh marches. Certainly, so long as my aged elders can carry their memories, and the memories of their fathers before them, Saturday night has been a festival recognized in all homely homes. Strange that it has only once been celebrated in literature.
It is, as it were, a short grace before the meal of leisure offered by the Sabbath; a side-dish before the ample banquet; a trifling with the olives of sweet idleness. On Saturday night the cares of the week are, for a space, laid aside, and men and women gather with their kind for amiable chatter and such mild conviviality as the times may afford. Then the bonds of preoccupation are loosed, and men escape for dalliance with the lighter things of life. Then the good gossips in town and country take their sober indulgence in the social amenities. In village street, or raucous town highway, they will pause between shops to greet this or that neighbour and discuss affairs of mutual concern.
On Saturday night is kept the festival of the String Bag, one of those many rigid feasts of the people that find no place in the Kalendar of the Prayer Book. Go where you will about the country on this night, and you will witness the celebration of this good domestic saint by the cheerful and fully choral service of Shopping. Go to East Street (Walworth Road); to St. John's Road (Battersea); to Putney High Street; to Stratford Broadway; to Newington Butts; to Caledonian Road; to Upper Street (Islington); toNorton-Folgate; to Kingsland Road; to Salmon Lane (Limehouse); to Mare Street (Hackney); to the Electric Avenue (Brixton); to Powis Street (Woolwich); to the great shopping centres of provincial cities or to the easier market-places of the rural district, and you will find this service lustily in progress; the shops lit with a fresh glamour for this their special occasion. You will taste a something in the air—a sense of well-being, almost of carnival—that marks this night from other nights of the week. You will see Mother hovering about the shops and stalls, her eye peeled for the elusive bargain, while Father, or one of the children, stands away off with the bag; and when the goodwife has achieved all that she set out to do, and the string bag is distended like an overfed baby, then comes the crowning joy of the feast, when the shoppers slip together into the private bar of the "Green Dragon" or the "White Horse," and compare notes with other Saturday-nighters and condemn the beer.
Saturday night is also, in millions of homes, Bath Night; another of the pious functions of this festival; and for this ceremony the attendance of the heads of the household is compulsory. Then the youngsters, according to their natures, howlwith delight or alarm as their turn for the tub approaches. They will be scrubbed by Mother and dried by Father; and when the whole brood is well and truly bathed and packed off to bed, the elders will depart with the string bag, and perchance, if shopping be expeditiously accomplished, take it, well-filled, to the second house of the local Empire or Palace.
Do you not remember—unless you were so unfortunate as to be brought up in what are called well-to-do surroundings—do you not remember the tingling delight that was yours when, to ensure correct behaviour during the week, the prospect was dangled before you of going shopping on Saturday night? Many Saturday nights do I recall, chiefly by association with these shopping expeditions, when I was permitted to carry the string bag; and the shopping expeditions again are recalled through the agency of smell. Never does my memory work so swiftly as when assisted by the nose; I am a bit of a dog in that way. When I catch the hearty smell of a provision shop, I leap back twenty-five years and I see the tempestuous Saturday-evening lights of Lavender Hill from the altitude of three-foot-six; and I remember how I would catalogue shop smells in mymind. There were the solemn smell of the furniture shop; the wholesome smell of the oilshop; the pungent smell of the chemist's; the potent smell of the "Dog and Duck", where I received my weekly heart-cake; the stiff smell of the linen-drapers'; the overpowering odour of the boot-shop, and the aromatic perfume of the grocer's; all of which, in one grand combination, present the smell of Saturday night: a smell as sharp and individual as the smell of Sunday morning or the smell of early-closing afternoon in the suburbs. If Rip van Winkle were to awake in any town or village on Saturday night, he would need no calendar to name for him the day of the week: the smell, the aspect, and the temper of the streets would surely inform him.
But lately Saturday night has come under control, and the severe hand of authority has wrenched away the most of its delight. Not now may the String Baggers express their individuality in shopping. Having registered for necessary comestibles at a given shop, they enjoy no more the sport of bargain-hunting, or of setting rival tradesmen in cheerful competition. Not now may the villagers crowd the wayside station for their single weekly railway trip to the neighbouringtown, where was larger scope for the perfect shopper than the native village could afford. No more may the earnest London Saturday-nighter journey by tram or bus to outlying markets because the quality of the meat was better in that district than in his own, or the price of eggs a penny lower—though, if the truth be known, these facts were mostly proffered as excuse for the excursion. No more do residents of Brixton travel to Clapham Junction for their Sunday stores, or the elegant ones of Streatham slink guiltily to Walworth Road. No more is Hampstead seen chaffering at the stalls of Camden Town, or Bayswater struggling gallantly about the shops of the Edgware Road and Kilburn.
The main function of Saturday night has died a dismal death. Still, the social side remains. Shopping of a sort still has to be done. One may still meet one's cronies in the market streets, and compare the bulk and quality of one's ration of this and that, and take a draught of insipid ale at the "Blue Pigeon", and talk of the untowardness of the times. But half of the savour is gone out of the week's event; and it is well that the Scots peasant made his song about it before it was controlled.
Although London possesses a thousand central points suitable for a street rendezvous, Londoners seem to have decided by tacit agreement to use only five of these for their outdoor appointments. They are: Charing Cross Post Office, Leicester Square Tube, Piccadilly Tube, under the Clock at Victoria, and Oxford Circus Tube; and I have never known my friends telephone me for a meeting and fix a rendezvous outside this list. Indeed, I can now, by long experience, place the habits and character of casual acquaintances who wish to meet me, from their choice among these places.
Thus, a Charing Cross Post Office appointment means a pleasure appointment. Here, at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, wait the bright girls and golden boys, their faces, like living lamps, shining through the cloud of pedestrians as a signal for that one for whom they wait. And, though you be late in keeping the appointment, you may be certain that the waiting party will bein placid mood. There is so much to distract and delight you on this small corner. There are the bustle of the Strand and the stopping buses; the busy sweep of Trafalgar Square, so spacious that its swift stream of traffic suggests leisure; the hot smell of savouries rising from the kitchens of Morley's Hotel; and the cynical amusement to be drawn from a study of the meetings and encounters of other waiting folk. Hundreds of appointments have I kept at Charing Cross Post Office. I have met soldier-friends there, after an absence of three years. I have met cousins and sisters and aunts, and damsels who stood not in any of these relations. And I have met the Only One there, many, many times; often happily; often in trepidation; and sometimes in lyrical ecstasy, as when a quarrel and a long parting have received the benison of reconciliation. Now, I can never pass the Post Office without a tremor, for its swart, squat exterior is, for me, bowered with delicious thrills.
Never keep an appointment under the Clock at Victoria. A meeting here is fatal to the sweetness of the intercourse that is to follow. Always he or she who arrives first will be peevish or irate by the time the second party turns up; forVictoria Station, with its lowering roof, affects you with a frightful sense of being shut in and smothered. Turn how you will, sharply or gently, and you cannon with some petulant human, and, retiring apologetically from him, you impale your kidney region on some fool's walking-stick or umbrella. That fool asks you to look where you're going, and then he gets his from a truck-load of luggage. You laugh—bitterly. After three minutes of waiting in that violet-tinted beehive, you loathe your fellow-man; you loathe the entire animal kingdom. You "come over in one of them prickly 'eats." Your nerves flap about you like bits of bunting, and the new spring suit that set in such fine lines seems fit only for scaring birds. Then your friend arrives, and God help him if he's late!
I have watched these Victoria appointments many times while waiting for my train. The first party to the contract arrives, glances at the clock, and strolls to the bookstall, cheerfully swinging stick or umbrella. He strolls back to the clock, glances, compares it with his watch. Hums a bar or two. Coughs. A flicker of dismay shades his face. Then a handicapped runner for the 6.15 crashes violently against him in avoiding aplatoon of soldiers, and knocks his hat over his eyes and his stick ten yards away. When the great big world ceases turning and he finds a voice, the offender has gone. The next glance he shoots at the clock is choleric. A slight prod from an old lady who wishes to find the main booking-office produces a spout of fury; and the comedy ends with a gestic departure, in the course of which he gets a little of his own back on other of his species. His final glance at the clock is charged with the pure essence of malevolence.
How much more gracious is an appointment in the great resounding hall of Euston, though this is mainly a travellers' rendezvous and is seldom used for general appointments. Here, cloistered from the rush and roar of the station proper, yet always with a cheerful sense of loud neighbourhood, the cathedral mood is induced. You become benign, Gothic. There are pleasant straw seats. There are writing-tables with real ink. There are noble photographs of English beauty-spots, and—oh, heaps of dinky little models of railway trains and Irish Channel steamers which light up when you drop pennies in the slots. Vast, serene and episcopal is this rendezvous—it always reminds me of the Athenæum Club; and, howeverprotracted your vigil, it showers upon you something of its quality; so that, though your friend be twenty minutes late, you still receive him affably, and talk in conversational tones of this and of that, instead of roaring the obvious like a baseball fan, as Victoria's hall demands. You may even make subtle epigrams at Euston, and your friend will take their point. I'd like to hear someone try to convey a fine shade of meaning in Victoria.
Oxford Circus Tube I register as the meeting-ground of the suburban flapper and the suburban shopping mamma. Its note is little swinging skirts, and artful silk stockings, and shining curls, that dance to the sober music of the matron's rustling satin. The waiting dames carry those dinky little brown-paper bags, stamped with the name of some Oxford Street draper, at whose contents the idler may amuse himself by guessing—a ribbon, a camisole, a flower-spray for a hat, gloves, or those odd lengths of cloth and linen which women will buy—though Lord knows to what esoteric use they put them. Hither come, too, those lonely people who, through the medium of "Companionship" columns or Correspondence Circles, have found a congenial soul. Why theychoose Oxford Circus I don't know, but they are always to be seen there. You may recognize the type at first glance. They peer and scan closely every arrival, for, though correspondence has introduced them to the other soul, they have not yet seen the body, and they are searching for someone to fit the description that has been supplied; as thus: "I am of medium height and shall be wearing a black hat, trimmed with Michaelmas daisies, and a fawn macintosh," or "I am tall, and shall be wearing a grey suit and black soft hat and spectacles, and will carry a copy of theBuff Reviewin my hand." One is pleased to speculate on the result of the meeting. Is it horrible disillusion, or does the flint find its fellow-flint and produce the true spark? Do they thereafter look happily upon Oxford Circus Tube, or pass it with a shudder?
The crowd that hovers about the Leicester Square Tube entrances affords little matter for reflection. It is so obvious. It is so Leicester Square. It alternately snarls and leers. It never truly smiles; it is so tired of the smiling business. The loud garb of the women tells its own tale. For the rest, there are bejewelled black men, a few Australian and Belgian soldiers, and a fewdisgruntled and "shopless" actors. I never accept an appointment at Leicester Square Tube. It puts me off the lunch or dinner or whatever business is the object of the meeting. It is ignoble, squalid, with an air of sickly decency about it.
A few yards further Westward, at Piccadilly Tube, the atmosphere changes. One tastes the ampler ether and diviner air. It does not, like Charing Cross Post Office, sing April and May, but rather the mellowness of August and September. Good solid people meet here; people "comfortably off," as the phrase goes; people who have lived largely, but have not lost their capacity for deliberate enjoyment. At meal-times they gather thickly; quiet, dainty women; obese majors; Government officials; and that nondescript type that wears shabby, well-cut clothes with an air of prosperity and breeding. You may almost name the first words that will be spoken when a couple meet: "Well, where shall we go? Trocadero, Criterion—or Soho?" There is little hilarity; people don't "let themselves go" at this rendezvous. They are out for entertainment, but it is mild, well-ordered entertainment. The note of the crowd is, "If a thing is worth doing at all, it's worth doing well," even if the thing isonly a hurried lunch or a curfew-rationed theatre.
Classifying London's meeting-places by their moral atmospheres, I would mark Charing Cross Post Office as juvenile; Oxford Circus Tube as youth; Leicester Square Tube as senility; Piccadilly Tube as middle-age; the Great Hall at Euston as reverend seniority; and Victoria Station—well, Victoria Station should get a total-rejection certificate.