The Cockney is popularly supposed to stand for the fixed type of the blasphemous and the cynical in his speech and attitude to life. He is supposed to jump with hobnailed boots on all things and institutions that are, to others, sacred. He is supposed to admit no solemnities, no traditional rites or services, to the big moments of life.
This is wrong. The Cockney's attitude to life is perhaps more solemn than that of any other social type, save when he is one of a crowd of his fellows; and then arises some primitive desire to mock and destroy. He will say "sir" to people who maintain their carriages or cars in his own district; but on Bank Holidays, when he visits territories remote from his home, he will roar and chi-ike at the pompous and the rich wherever he sees it.
But the popular theory of the Cockney is most effectively exploded when he is seen in a dramatic situation or in some moment of emotional stress. He does not then cry "Gorblimey" or"Comartovit" or some current persiflage of the day; or stand reticent and monosyllabic, as some superior writers depict him; but, from some atavistic cause, harks back to the speech of forgotten Saxon forefathers.
This trick you will find reflected in the melodrama and the cheap serial story that are made for his entertainment. It is hostile to superior opinion, but it is none the less true to say that melodrama does endeavour to reflect life as it is. When the wronged squire says to his erring son: "Get you gone; never darken my doors again," he is not talking a particular language of melodrama. He may be a little out of his part as a squire; that is not what a father of long social position and good education would say to a scapegrace son; but it is what an untaught town labourer would say in such a circumstance; and, as these plays are written for him, the writers draw their inspiration from his speech and manners. The programme allure of the Duke of Bentborough, Lord Ernest Swaddling, Lady Gwendoline Flummery, and so on, is used simply to bring him to the theatre. The scenes he witnesses, and the scenes he pays to witness, show himself banishing his son, himself forgiving his prodigaldaughter, with his own attitudes and his own speech. The illiterate do not quote melodrama; melodrama quotes them.
Again and again this has been proved in London police-courts. When the emotions are roused, the Cockney does not pick his words and alight carefully on something he heard at the theatre last week; nor does he become sullen and abashed. He becomes violently vocal. He speaks out of himself. Although he seldom enters a church, the grip of the church is so tightly upon him that you may, as it were, see its knuckles standing in white relief when he speaks of solemn affairs. If you ask him about his sick Uncle John, he will not tell you that Uncle John is dead, or has "pegged out" or "snuffed it"; such phrases he reserves for reporting the passing of Prime Ministers, Dukes and millionaires. He will tell you that Uncle John has "passed away" or "gone home"; that it is a "happy release"; and, between swigs at his beer, he will give you intimate, but carefully veiled, details of his passing. He will never speak of the elementary, universal facts of life without the use of euphemism. A young unmarried mother is always spoken of as having "got into trouble." It is never saidthat she is about to have a baby; she is "expecting." He never reports that an acquaintance has committed suicide; he has "done away with himself" or "made a hole in the water."
At an inquest on a young girl in the Bermondsey district, the mother was asked when last she saw her daughter.
"A'Monday. And that was the last time I ever clapped eyes on her, as Gawd is my witness."
At another inquest on a Hoxton girl, a young railwayman was called as witness. Having given his evidence, he suddenly rushed to the body, and bent over it, and cried loudly:—
"Oh, my dove, my dear! My little blossom's been plucked away!"
In a police-court maternity case, I heard the following from the mother of the deserted girl, who had lost her case; "Ah, God! an' shall this villain escape from his crime scot-free?" And in the early days of the war a bereaved woman created a scene at an evening service in a South London Church with this audible prayer: "Oh, Gawd, take away this Day of Judgment from the people, fer the sake of Thy Son Jesus. Amen."
Again, at Thames Police Court, during a caseof theft against a boy of seventeen, the father was called, and admitted to turning his son from home when he was fifteen, because of his criminal ways.
"Yerce, I did send 'im orf. An' never shall 'is foot cross my threshold until 'e's mended 'is evil ways."
The same reversion to passionate language may be found in many of the unreported incidents of battle. I have heard of Cockneys, whose pals were killed at their side, and of their comment on the affair in the stress of the moment:—
"Old George! I loved old George better'n I loved anything in the world. I'd 'ave give my 'eart's blood fer George."
And the cry of a mother at the Old Bailey, when her son was sentenced to death:—
"Oh, take me. Take my old grey 'airs. Let me die in 'is stead."—
And here is the extraordinary statement of a girl of fourteen, who, tired of factory hours and home, ran away for a few days, and then would not go back for fear of being whipped by her father. At the end of her holiday she gave herself up to the police on the other side of Londonfrom her home, and this was her statement to them:—
"Why can't I go where I want to? I don't do anybody any harm. I knew the world was good. I got tired of all the monotony, an' the same old thing every day, an' I wanted to get out. I am. Why bother me? I wonder why I can't go out and do as I like, so long as I don't do no harm. I thought the world was so big an' good, but in reality living in it is like being in a cage. You can't do nothing in this world unless somebody else consents."
Strange wisdom from a child of fourteen, spoken in moments of terror before uniformed policemen in that last fear of the respectable—the police-station. But it is in such official places that the Cockney loses the part he is for ever playing—though, like most of us, he is playing it unconsciously—and becomes something strangely lifted from the airy, confident materialist of his common moments. The educated man, on the other hand, brought into court or into other dramatic surroundings, ceases to be himself and begins to act. The Cockney, normally without dignity, achieves it in dramatic moments, wherethe man of position and dignity usually crumbles away to rubbish or ineptitude.
Hence, only the wide-eyed writers of melodrama have successfully produced the Cockney on the stage. True, they dress him in evening clothes, and surround him with impossible butlers and footmen, but if you want to probe the Cockney's soul, and cannot probe it at first-hand, it is to melodrama and the cheap serial that you must turn; not to the slum stories of novelists who live in Kensington or to the "low-life" plays of condescending dramatists.
When everything in your little world goes wrong; when you can do nothing right; when you have cut yourself while shaving, and it has rained all day, and the taxis have splashed your collar with mud, and you receive an Army notice, post-marked on the outer coveringBuy National War Bonds Now—in short, when you are fed up, what do you do?
To each man his own remedy. I know one man who, in such circumstances, goes to bed and reads Ecclesiastes; another who goes on an evening jag; another who goes for a ten-mile walk in desolate country; another who digs up his garden; another who reads school stories. But my own cure is to board a London tram-car bound for the outer suburbs, and take mine ease at a storied sixteenth-century inn.
Where is this harbour of refuge? No, thank you; I am not giving it away. I am too fearful that it may become popular and thereby spoiled. I will only tell you that its sign is "TheChequers"; that it is a low-pitched, rambling post-house, with cobbled coach-yard, and ridiculous staircases that twist and wind in all directions, and rooms where apparently no rooms could be; that it was for a while the G.H.Q. of Charles the First; and that it is soaked in that ripe, substantial atmosphere that belongs to places where companies of men have for centuries eaten and drunken and quarrelled and loved and rejoiced.
You talk of your galleried inns of Chester and Shrewsbury and Ludlow and Salisbury, and your thousand belauded old-world villages of the West.... Here, within a brief tram-ride of London, so close to the centre of things that you may see the mantle of metropolitan smoke draping the spires and steeples, is a place as rich in the historic thrill as any of these show-places.
But its main charm for me is the goodly fellowship and comfortable talk to be had in the little smoking-room, decorated with original sketches by famous black-and-white men who make it their week-end rendezvous. You may be a newcomer at "The Chequers," but you will not long be lonely unless your manner cries a desire for solitude. Its rooms are aglow with all those little delights of the true inn that are now almostlegendary. One reads in old fiction and drama of noble inns and prodigally hospitable landlords; but I have always found it difficult to accept these pictures as truth. I have sojourned in so many old inns about the country, and found little welcome, unless I arrived in a car and ordered expensive accommodation. It was not until I spent a night at "The Chequers" that I discovered an inn that might have been invented by Fielding, and a landlord who is and who looks the true Boniface.
I had missed the last car and the last train back to town. I wandered down the not very tidy High Street, and called at one or two of the hundred taverns that jostle one another in the street's brief length. The external appearance of "The Chequers" promised at least a comfortable bed, and I booked a room, and then wandered to the bar. I felt dispirited, as I always do in inns and hotels; as though I were an intruder with no friend in the world. I ordered a drink and looked round the little bar. My company were a police-sergeant in uniform, a horsey-looking man in brown gaiters, an elderly, saturnine fellow in easy tweeds, a young fellow in blue overall—obviously an electrician'smechanic—and a little, merry-faced chap with a long flowing moustache. I scrutinized faces, and sniffed the spiritual atmosphere of each man. It was the usual suburban bar crowd, and I assumed that I was in for a dull time. The talk was all saloon-bar platitudes—This was a Terrible War. The rain was coming down, wasn't it? Yes, but the farmers could do with it. Yes, but you could have too much of a good thing, couldn't you? Ah, you could never rely on the English climate.... Three shillings a pound they were. Scandalous. Robbery. Somebody was making some money out of this war. Ah, there was a lot going on in Whitehall that the public never heard about....So, clutching at a straw, I opened the local paper, and read about A Pretty Wedding at St. Matthew's, and a Presentation to Mr. Gubbins, and a Runaway Horse in the High Street, and a——
Then came the felicitous shock. From the horsey man came words that rattled on my ears like the welcome hoofs of a relief-party.
"No, it wasn't Euripides, I keep telling you. It was Sophocles," he insisted. "I know it was Sophocles. I got the book at home—in a translation. And I see it played some time ago intown. Ask Mr. Connaught here if I'm not right." He grew flushed as he argued his rightness. I followed the direction of his nod. Mr. Connaught was the disgruntled-looking man in tweeds. And Mr. Connaught set down his whisky, fished in a huge well of a side-pocket, and produced—Œdipus Rexin the original Greek, and began to talk of it.
I sank back, abashed at my too previous judgment. Here was a man who, during the half-hour that I had been sitting there, had talked like a grocer or a solicitor's clerk—of the obvious and in the obvious way. It was he who had made the illuminating remarks that there was a lot going on in Whitehall that we didn't know anything about, and that you could never rely on the English climate. And now he was raving about Sophocles, and chanting fragments to the assembled whisky-drinkers. Tiring of Sophocles, he dived again into the pocket and produced Aristophanes.
The talk then became general. The constable, apparently annoyed at so much Latin and Greek, thrust into the chatter a loud contention that when a man had finished with English authors, then was time enough to go to the classics. Give himBoswell'sJohnsonandPepys' Diaryand a set of Dickens written in the language of his fathers, to keep on the dressing-table, within easy reach of the bed, like. The electrician's mechanic couldn't bother with novels; he was up to the neck just now in Spencer and Häckel and Bergson, and if we hadn't read Bergson, then we ought to: we were missing something. Then somehow the talk switched to music, and there followed a dissertation by the police-sergeant on ancient church music and the futility of grand opera, and names like Palestrina and Purcell and Corelli were thrown about, with a cross-fire of "Bitter, please, Miss Fortescue"—"Martell, please; just a splash of soda—don't drown it"—"Have you tried the beer at the 'Hole-in-the-Wall?'—horrible muck"—"Come on—drink up, there, Fred; you're very slow to-night."
"D'you know this little thing by Sibelius?" asked the merry fellow; and hummed a few bars from theThousand Seas.
"Ah, get away with yer moderns!" snapped the police-sergeant. "This Debussy, Scriabine, Schonberg and that gang. Keep to the simplicities, I say—Handel, Bach, Haydn and Gluck. Listen to this;" and he suddenly drew back fromthe bar, lifted a mellow voice at full strength, and delivered "Che Faro" fromOrfeo; and then took a mighty swig at a pint tankard and said that it had just that bite that you only get when it's drawn from the wood.
It took me some time to pull myself together and sort things out. I wondered what I had stumbled upon: whether other pubs in this suburb offered similar intellectual refreshment; whether all the local tradesmen were bookmen and music-lovers; and how to reconcile the dreary talk that I had first heard with the enthusiastic and individual discourse that was now proceeding. I wondered whether it were a dream, and how soon I should wake up. If it were real, I wondered if people would believe me if I told them of it.
But soon I dismissed all speculation, for by a happy chance I was drawn into the circle. Some discussion having arisen on beer and its varying quality, a member of the company produced a once-popular American pamphlet, entitledTen Nights in a Bar-Room; whereupon I handed round a little brochure of my own, compiled, for private circulation, from contributions by members of that London rambling Club, "The Blueskin Gang," and entitledTen Bar-Rooms in a Night.This pleased the company, and I at once became popular and had to take my part in the gigantic beer-drinking. Then the merry-faced little fellow slipped away, and quickly returned to counter my move with an old calf-bound seventeenth-century book,The Malt-Worm's Guide: a description of the principal London taverns of the period, with notes as to the representative patrons and the quality of the entertainment, material and moral, offered by each establishment; every page adorned with preposterous but captivating woodcuts.
On my suggesting that "The Blueskin Gang" might compile a similar guide on the London bars of to-day, each member of the company burst in with material for such a work. We decided that it would be impossible to follow the model ofThe Malt-Worm's Guidefor such a work, since the London taverns of to-day are fast shedding their individual character. Formerly, one might know certain houses as a printers' bar, a journalists' bar, a lawyers', and so on. The "Cock," in Fleet Street, remains a rendezvous for legal gentry, and the taverns between Piccadilly and Curzon Street are still "used" by grooms and butlers; and two Oxford Street bars are theunregistered headquarters of the furniture trade. And do you know the "Steam Engine" in Bermondsey, the haunt of the South-Eastern Railway men, where gather engine-drivers, firemen, guards and other mighty travellers? A pleasant house, with just that touch of uncleanliness that goes with what some people call low company, and produces a harmony of rough living that is so attractive to matey men. And the Burton they used to sell in old times—oh, boy—as my American friends say—even to think of it gives you that gr-rand and gl-lor-ious feelin'.
But these places make the full list. The war has largely obliterated fine distinctions. The taverns of the Strand and its side streets, once the clubs of the lower Thespians, have become the rendezvous of Colonial soldiers. The jewellers who once foregathered at the Monico, have been driven out by French and Belgian military; and Hummum's, in Covent Garden, into which you hardly dared enter unless you were a market-man, has become anybody's property.
While I named the taverns of central London and their pre-war character, others of the company threw in details of obscure but highly-flavoured houses in outlying quarters of the cityto which their business had at times occasioned them, with much inside information as to the special drinks of each establishment and its regular frequenters. I saw at once that such a work, if produced, would exceed the bulk of Kelly's Post Office Directory, but the discussion, though of no practical value, gave me a closer view of the idiosyncrasies of the company. The lover of Sophocles liked loud, jostling bars, reeking with the odour of crowded and violent humanity, where you truly fought for your drink; where no voice could be heard unless your ear were close upon it, and where you had barely room to crook your elbow: such bars as you find in the poorer quarters, as seem, at first acquaintance, to be under the management of the Sicilian Players. The electrician preferred a nice quiet house where he could sit down—no doubt to think about Bergsonism. The musical police-sergeant had no preferences in the matter of company or surroundings; the quality of the beer was all his concern. The horsey-looking man liked those large, well-kept, isolated suburban bars where you might find but two or three customers with whom you could have what he called a Good Old Talk About Things.
At closing time I discovered that the little merry-faced fellow was the host; indeed, I had placed him in some such capacity, for his face might have been preserved on canvas as the universal type of the jovial landlord.
"You're staying here, aren't you? Come through to my room for a bit. Unless you want to get off to bye-bye."
I didn't want to get off to bye-bye. I wanted to know more of this comic-opera inn. So I followed him to his private room, and I found it walled with books—real books, such as were loved by Lamb—The Anatomy of Melancholy, Walker'sOriginal,The Compleat Angler,an Elizabethan Song-book, Descartes, Leopardi, Montaigne, and so on. The piano in the corner bore an open volume of Mozart's Sonatas; and this extraordinary Boniface, having "put the bar up," seated himself and played Mozart and Beethoven and Schumann and Isolde's "Liebestod," and morsels of Grieg, until three o'clock in the morning, when I climbed to my room.
On the way he showed me the King Charles room and the delightful eighteenth-century mezzotints on the stair-case walls, and the secret way from the first floor to the yard. From that nightour friendship began. I stayed there the following day and for two days more, and pulled his books about, and roamed over the many rooms, and met the company of my first night in the bar.
I was charmed by the air of intimacy that belongs to that bar, deriving, I think, from the sweet nature of the host. You may stay at popular inns or resplendent hotels, and make casual acquaintance in the lounges, and exchange talk; but it is impossible, in the huge cubic space of such establishments, to come near to other spirits. You do not meet a man in town and say: "What? You've stayed at the 'Royal York'? I've stayed there too," and straightway develop a friendship. But you can meet a stranger, and say: "What? You know 'The Chequers?' D'you know Jimmy?" and you fall at once to discussing old Jimmy, the landlord, and you admit the stranger to the secrets of your heart.
Jimmy—I hope he won't mind my writing him down as Jimmy; you have only to look at him to know that he cannot be James or Jim—Jimmy radiates cheer; whether in his own inn or in other people's. Among his well-smoked furniture and walls men talk freely and listen keenly. There is no obscene reticence, no cunning reserve.Unpleasant men would be miserable at "The Chequers"; they would seek some other biding-place where self-revelation is kept within diplomatic bounds.
Believe me, "The Mermaid" was not the end of the great taverns. What things have we seen done and heard said at the bar of "The Chequers." What famous company has gathered there on Sunday evenings, artists, literary men, musicians, philosophers, entering into fierce argument and vociferous agreement with the local stalwarts. In these troubled times people are mentally slack. They readily accept mob opinion, to save themselves the added strain of thinking; and eagerly adopt the attitude that it is idle to concern oneself with intellectual affairs in these days; so that there is now no sensible talk to be had in bar or club. Wherefore, it is a relief to possess one place—and that an inn—where one may be sure of finding company that will join with relish in serious talk and put their whole lives in a jest. Such delight and refreshment do I find at this inn, that scarcely a Saturday passes but I board the car and glide to "The Chequers" in—well, just beyond the London Postal District.
The turning-out of the crowded drawers of an old bureau or cabinet is universally known as the prime pastime of the faded spinster; a pastime in which the starved spirit may exercise itself among delicious melancholies and wraiths of spent joys. Well, I am not yet faded, and I am not a spinster; but I have fallen to the lure of "turning out." I have lately "turned out"—not the musty souvenirs of fifty years ago, love, fifty years ago, but the still warm fragments ofA.D.1912.
The other day, while searching irately in my fumed-oak rolltop desk for a publisher's royalty statement which he had not sent me, I opened at random a little devil of a drawer who conceals his being in the right-hand lower corner. And lo! out stepped, airily, that well-polished gentleman, Mr. Nineteen-Twelve. My anger over the missing accounts was at once soothed. In certain chapters of this book I have harked back to the years before 1914, and it may be that you conceive me as a doddering old bore: a praiser oftimes past. But what would you have? You have not surely the face to ask me to praise times present?
So I took a long look at Mr. Nineteen-Twelve, and went thoroughly through him. My first discovery was an old menu. My second discovery was a bunch of menus. You won't get exasperated—will you?—if I print here the menu of a one-and-sixpenny dinner, eaten on a hot June night in Greek Street:—
Hors-d'œuvre varié.· ·Consommé Henri IV.Crème Parmentier.· ·Saumon bouillé.Concombre.· ·Filet mignon.Pommes sautés.Haricots verts.· ·Poulet en casserole.Salade saison.· ·Fraises aux liqueurs.Glace vanille.· ·Fromages.· ·Dessert.· ·Café.
I dug my hand deeper into the pockets of Mr. Nineteen-Twelve, and menu after menu and relic after relic came forth. There was a menu of a Lotus Club supper. I'm hanged if I can remember the Lotus Club, or its idea, or even its situation. There were old hotel bills, which, thrown together in groups, might suggest itineraries for some very good walking tours; for there were bills from Stratford-on-Avon and Goring-on-Thames and High Wycombe and Oxford and Banbury; there were bills from Bognor and Arundel and Chichester and the Isle of Wight; there were bills from Tintern and Chepstow and Dean Forest and Monmouth; there were bills from Kendal and Appleby and Windermere and Grasmere. Another clutching hand gave up old menus from the Great Western, the North-Western, and the Great Northern dining-cars. In a corner I found an assortment of fancy cigarette tins and boxes, specially designed and engraved for various restaurants and hotels. Now the cigarette tins are no more, and the boxes are made from flimsy card and are none too well printed, and many of the restaurants from which they came have disappeared, these elaborate productions aretreasurable, not only as echoes of the good days, but asobjets d'art.
Further search produced a flat aluminium match-case containing twelve vestas, and crested "With compliments—Criterion Restaurant"; and a tin waistcoat-pocket match box, also full, containing, on the inside of the lid, a charming glimpse of the interior of the Boulogne Restaurant—a man and woman at table, in 1912 fashions, lifting champagne glasses and crying, through a loop that begins and finishes at their mouths: "Evviva noi!" The sight of this streak of matches spurred me to further prospecting, and the pan, after careful washing, yielded boxes from Paris, with gaudy dancing-girls on either cover; insanely decorated boxes from Italy, filled with red-stemmed, yellow-headed matches; plain boxes from Monaco; and from Ostend, very choice boxes, decorated inside and outside with examples of the Old Masters.
Packets of toothpicks, with wrappers advertising various English and Continental bars, came from another corner, where they were buried under a torn page from an oldTatler, showing, in various phases, Portraits of a Well-Dressed Man.This species being now extinct, I hope the plate of that page has been destroyed, so that my relic may possess some value. Two tickets for the Phyllis Court enclosure at Henley lay neglected under a printed invitation to have "A Breath of Fresh Air with the 'Old Mitre' Christmas Club, Leaving the 'Old Mitre' by four-horse brake at 10.30, to arrive at 'The Green Man,' Richmond, at 12 noon. A Whacking Good Dinner and a Meat Tea. Dancing on the Lawn at Dusk." An old programme of the Covent Garden Grand Season recalled that magnificent band of Wagnerians, Knupfer, Dittmar, van Rooy and the rest. Where are they now—these bull-voiced Rhinelanders? Within the programme covers I found a ticket for admission to the fight between young Ahearn and Carpentier which was abandoned; a printed card inviting me to a Tango Tea at the Savoy; a request for the pleasure of my company at the Empress Rooms to dance to the costive cacophony of a Pink Bavarian Band; and half a dozen newspaper cuttings, with scare-heads and cross-heads, dealing at much length with Debussy's tennis-court ballet, "Jeux," danced by Nijinsky, Schollar and Karsavina. Turning over one of these cuttings, I found a long report of theburning of a pillar-box by a Suffragette, and a list of recent window-breakings.
A little packet at the bottom caught my eye, and I dived for it. It was a small box of liqueur chocolates from Rumpelmayer's—unopened, old boy! unopened. I am a devil for sweets, and I was beginning to tear the wrapper, when conscience bade me pause. Ought I to eat them? Ought I not first to ascertain whether there were not others whose need was greater than mine? Think of the number of girls who would give their last hairpin for but one of the luscious little umber cubes. What right had I to liqueur chocolates of 1912 vintage? Conscience won. The packet is still unopened; and if, within seven days from the appearance of these lines, the ugliest girl in the W.A.A.C. will let me have her name and address and photograph, it will be sent to her. Failing receipt of any application by the specified date, I shall feel free to eat 'em.
Two others relics yet remained. One was a small gold coin, none too common, even in those days, and now, I believe, obsolete. I fancy we called it a half-sovereign, or half-quid, or half-thick-un or half-Jimmy, according to the current jargon of our set. The other was a throw-awayleaflet, advertising on one side the programme of a London County Council concert in Embankment Gardens, and on the other the cheap Sunday and Monday excursions arranged by the National Sunday League.
This was the most heart-breaking of all the mementoes. How many Sundays, that otherwise might have been masses of melancholy, were shattered into glowing fragments by these inexpensive peeps at the heart of England? I can remember now these fugitive glimpses, with every little incident of each glad journey; and I am impelled to breathe a prayer from the soul for the well-being of the Sunday League, since it was only by the enterprise of the kindly N.S.L. that I was able to see my own country. Here I give you the list of trips, with return fares, advertised on the leaflet before me:—
Sacred name of an Albert Stanley!
Uttering this ejaculation, I restored my treasures to their hiding-place with the fumbling fingers of the dew-eyed, ruminative spinster, and locked the drawer against careless hands; hoping that, some day, some keen collector of the rare and curious might come along and offer me a blank cheque for this collection of Nineteen-Twelviana. Looking it over, I consider it a very good Lot—well-assorted; each item in mint state and scarce; one or two, indeed, unique.
What offers?
On a bright afternoon of last summer I suffered all the thrills described in the sestet of Keats's sonnet, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." I discovered a new art-form. I felt like that watcher of the skies. I stood upon a peak in Darien. But I was not silent, for what I had discovered was the game of baseball, and—incidentally—the soul of America.
That match between the American Army and Navy teams was my first glimpse of a pastime that has captivated a continent. I can well understand its appeal to the modern temperament; for it is more than a game: it is a sequence of studied, grotesque poses through which the players express all the zest of the New World. You should see Williams at the top of his pitch. You should see the sweep of Mimms' shoulders at the finish of a wild strike. You should see Fuller preparing to catch. What profusion of vorticist rhythms! With what ease and finish they were executed! I know of no keener pleasure thanthat of watching a man do something that he fully knows how to do—whether it be Caruso singing, Maskelyne juggling, Balfour making an impromptu speech, a doctor tending a patient, Brangwyn etching, an engineer at his engines, Pachmann at the piano, Inman at the billiard-table, a captain bringing his ship alongside, roadmen driving in a staple, or Swanneck Rube pitching. Oh, pretty to watch, sir, pretty to watch! No hesitation here; no feeling his way towards a method; no fortuitous hair's-breadth triumph over the nice difficulty; but cold facility and swift, clear answers to the multiple demands of the situation. Oh, attaboy, Rube!
I was received in the Army's dressing-room by Mimms, their captain, who said he was mighty glad to know me, and would put me wise to anything in the game that had me beat. The whole thing had me beat. I was down and out before the Umpire had cried his first "Play Ball!" which he delivered as one syllable: "Pl'barl!" The players in their hybrid costumes—a mixture of the jockey and the fencer—the catcher in his gas mask and stomach protector and gigantic mitt, and the wild grace of the artists as they "warmed up," threw me into ecstasy, and thenew thrill that I had sought so long surged over my jaded spirit.
Then the game began, and the rooting began. In past years I attended various Test Matches and a few football matches in Northern mining districts, when the players came in for a certain amount of barracking; but these affairs were church services compared with the furious abuse and hazing handed to any unfortunate who made an error. Such screams and eldritch noises I never thought to hear from the human voice. No Englishman could achieve them: his vocal cords are not made that way. There was, for example, an explosive, reverberating "Ah-h-h-h-h-h!" which I now practise in my backgarden in order to scare the sparrows from my early peas. But my attempts are no more like the real thing than Australian Burgundy is like wine. I can achieve the noise, but some subtle quality is ever lacking.
The whole scene was barbaric pandemonium: the grandstand bristling with megaphones and tossing arms and dancing hats and demoniac faces offered a superb subject for an artist of the Nevinson or Nash school. A Chinese theatre is but a faint reflection of a ball game. I had never imagined that this hard, shell-covered, businesspeople could break into such a debauch of frenzy. You should have heard the sedate Admiral Sims, when the Navy made a homer, with his: "Attaboy! Oh, attaway to play ball! Zaaaa. Zaaa. Zaaa!" and when his men made a wild throw he sure handed them theirs.
Here are a few of the phrases hurled at offending players:—
"Aw, well, well, well, well, well!"
"Ah, you pikers, where was you raised?"
"Hey, pitcher, is this the ball game or a corner-lot game?"
"Say, bo, youcanplay ball—maybe."
"Hey, catcher, quit the diamond, and lemme li'l brudder teach yeh."
"Say, who's that at bat? What's the good of sending in a dead man?"
"Aw, dear, dear, dear! Gimme some barb' wire. I wanter knit a sweater for the barnacle on second."
"Oh, watch this, watch this! He's a bad actor. Kill the bad actor!"
"More ivory—more ivory! Oh, boy, I love every bone in yer head."
"Get a step-ladder to it. Take orf that pitcher. He's pitching over a plate in heaven."
"Aw, you quitter. Oh. Oh. Oh. Bonehead, bonehead, bonehead.Ahhhh."
"Now show 'em where you live, boy. Let's have something with a bit of class to it."
"Give him the axe, the axe, the axe."
"What's the matter with the man on third? 'Tisn't bed-time yet."
An everlasting chorus, with reference to the scoring-board, chanted like an anthem:—
"Go-ing up! Go-ing up! Go-ing up!"
At the end of the game—the Navy's game all the way—the fury and abandon increased, though, during the game, it had not seemed possible that it could. But it did. And when, limp and worn, I shuffled out to Walham Green, and Mimms asked me whether the game had got me, I could only reply, with a diminuendo:—
"Well, well, well, well, well!"
I shall never again be able to watch with interest a cricket or football match; it would be like a tortoise-race after the ball game. Such speed and fury, such physical and mental zest, I had never before seen brought to the playing of a simple game. It might have been a life-or-death struggle, and the balls might have beenMills bombs, and the bats rifles. If the Americans at play give any idea of their qualities at battle, then Heaven help the fresh guys who are up against them.
When the boys had dressed I joined up with a party of them, and we adjourned to the Clarendon; where one of us, a Chicago journalist, not trusting the delicacy of the bartender's hand, obtained permission to sling his own; and a Bronx was passed to each of us for necessary action. This made a fitting kick to the ball game, for a Bronx is concentrated essence of baseball; full of quips and tricks and sharp twists of flavour; inducing that gr-r-rand and ger-l-lorious feelin'. It took only two of these to make the journalist break into song, and he gave us some excellent numbers of American marching-songs. He started with the American "Tipperary," sung to an air of Sullivan's:—
Hail, hail, the gang's all here!What th'ell do we care?What th'ell do we care?Hail, hail, the gang's all here,So what th'ell do we care now?
Hail, hail, the gang's all here!What th'ell do we care?What th'ell do we care?Hail, hail, the gang's all here,So what th'ell do we care now?
Hail, hail, the gang's all here!What th'ell do we care?What th'ell do we care?Hail, hail, the gang's all here,So what th'ell do we care now?
Hail, hail, the gang's all here!
What th'ell do we care?
What th'ell do we care?
Hail, hail, the gang's all here,
So what th'ell do we care now?
Then "Happy-land":—
I wish I was in Happy-land,Where rivers of beer abound;With sloe-gin rickies hanging on the treesAnd high-balls rolling on the ground.What?High-balls rolling on the ground?Sure!High-balls rolling on the ground.
I wish I was in Happy-land,Where rivers of beer abound;With sloe-gin rickies hanging on the treesAnd high-balls rolling on the ground.What?High-balls rolling on the ground?Sure!High-balls rolling on the ground.
I wish I was in Happy-land,Where rivers of beer abound;With sloe-gin rickies hanging on the treesAnd high-balls rolling on the ground.What?High-balls rolling on the ground?Sure!High-balls rolling on the ground.
I wish I was in Happy-land,
Where rivers of beer abound;
With sloe-gin rickies hanging on the trees
And high-balls rolling on the ground.
What?
High-balls rolling on the ground?
Sure!
High-balls rolling on the ground.
Then the anthem of the "dry" States:—
Nobody knows how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am,You don't know how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am.Nobody knows how dry I am,And nobody cares a damn.
Nobody knows how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am,You don't know how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am.Nobody knows how dry I am,And nobody cares a damn.
Nobody knows how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am,You don't know how dry I am,How dry I am,How dry I am.Nobody knows how dry I am,And nobody cares a damn.
Nobody knows how dry I am,
How dry I am,
How dry I am,
You don't know how dry I am,
How dry I am,
How dry I am.
Nobody knows how dry I am,
And nobody cares a damn.
After this service of song, brief, bright and brotherly, we moved slowly Eastward, and in Kensington Gardens I learned something about college yells. For suddenly, without warning, one of the party bent forward, with arms outstretched, and yelled the following at a pensive sheep:—
"Alle ge reu, ge reu, ge reu. War-who-bar-za. Hi ix, hi ip; hi capica, doma nica. Hong pong. Lita pica. Halleka, balakah, ba."
At first I conjectured that the Bronx was running its course, but when he had spoken his piece the rest of the gang let themselves go, and I thenunderstood that we were having a round of college yells. Respectable strangers might have mistaken the performance for the war march of the priests, or the entry of the gladiators, or the battle-song of the hairy Ainus; for such monstrous perversions of sense and sound surely have never before disturbed the serenity of the Gardens.
I understand that the essential of a good college yell is that it be utterly meaningless, barbaric and larynx-racking. It should seem to be the work of some philologist who had suddenly gone mad under the strain of his studies and had attempted to converse with an aborigine. I think Augustana's yell pretty well fills that condition:—
"Rocky-eye, rocky-eye. Zip, zum, zie. Shingerata, shingerata, bim, bum, bie. Zip-zum, zip-zum, rah, rah, rah. Karaborra, karaborra, Augus-tana."
At the conclusion of this choral service we caught a bus to Piccadilly Circus and I left them at the Tube entrance singing "Bob up serenely," and went home to dream of the ball game and of millions of fans screaming abstruse advice into my deaf ear.
Oh, attaboy!
* * * * *
Since that merry meeting I have had many opportunities of getting next to the American Army and Navy, and hearing their views of us and British views of them, and the experience has done me a lot of good. Until then, the only Americans I had met were the leisured, over-moneyed tourists, mostly disagreeable, and, as I have found since, by no means representative of their country. You know them. They came to England in the autumn, and stayed at opulent hotels, and made a lot of noise around ancient shrines, and sent local prices sky-rocketing wherever they stayed, and threw their weight and fifty-dollar tips about, and "Say'd" and "My'd" and "Gee'd" up and down the Strand; that kind of American. These people did their country a lot of harm, because I and thousands of other people received them as Americans and disliked them; just as wealthy trippers to and from other countries leave bad impressions of their people. I made up my mind on America from my meetings with these parvenus. I had forgotten that the best and typical people of a country are the hard-working, stay-at-home people, whose labours just enable them to feed and clothe their children and provide nothing for gadding about to othercountries. To-day, the solid middle-class people of England and America are meeting and mixing, and all political history is washed out by the waters of social intercourse between them. High officials and diplomats are for ever telling one another over official luncheon tables that the friendship of this and that nation is sealed, but such remarks are valueless until the common people of either country have met and made their own decision; and the cost of living does not permit such meetings. Thus we have wars and unholy alliances. If only the common people of all countries could meet and exchange views in a common language, without the prejudice inspired by Press and politician, international amity would be for ever established, as Anglo-American amity is now established by the free-and-easy meeting of hard-working, middle-class Americans and the same social type of Englishman.
After meeting hundreds of Americans of a class and position similar to my own, I have changed all my views of America. We have everything in common and nothing to differ about. I don't care a damn on whose side was right or wrong in 1773. I have taken the boys round London. I have played their games. I haveeaten their food. I have talked their slang and taught them mine. They have eaten my food, and we have sported joyfully together, and discussed music and books and theatres, and amiably amused ourselves at the expense of each other's social institutions and ceremonies. As they are guests in England, I have played host, and, among other entertainment that I have offered, I have been able to give them what they most needed; namely, evenings and odd hours in real middle-class English homes, where they could see an Englishwoman pour out tea and see an English baby put to bed. I found that they were sick of the solemn "functions" arranged for their entertainment. They didn't want high-brow receptions or musical entertainments in Mayfair. They preferred the spontaneous entertainment arising from a casual encounter in the street, as by asking the way to this or that place, leading to an invitation to a suburban home and a suburban meal. From such a visit they get an insight into our ways, our ideals, our outlook on life, better than they ever could from a Pall Mall club or a Government official's drawing-room. They get the real thing, which is something to write home about. In the "arranged" affairs they are"guests"; in the others, they are treated with the rude, haphazard fellowship which we extend to friends.
In these troubled days there is little room for the exercise of the graces of life. Our ears are deaf to the gentle voice of urbanity. The delicacies of intercourse have been trodden underfoot, and lie withered and broken. Even the quality of mercy has been standardized and put into uniform. Throughout the world to-day, everything is organized, and to organize a beautiful movement or emotion is to brutalize it: while lubricating its mechanism you ossify its soul. Thank God, there is still left a little spontaneity. Human impulse may be bruised and broken, but it is a fiery thing, and hard to train to harness or to destroy; and I can assure you that the Americans are grateful for it wherever it finds expression.
One evening, just before curfew—it was night according to the Government, but the sky said quite clearly that it was evening—I was standing at my favourite coffee-stall near King's Cross, eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking introspective coffee, and chatting with the boss on the joy of life.
"Met any of the Americans?" I asked, anxious to get his opinion of them.
"Met any? Crowds of 'em."
"What do you think of 'em?"
"Oh, I dunno. Bit of a change after all these other foreigners. 'Strewth—d'yeh know, when a Cockney like yesself comes along to the stall I feel like dropping down dead—'strewth, I do. Never get none o' the usual 'appy crowd along now," he went on, mopping the sloppy counter.
"But how do the Americans strike you?"
"The Americans? Well...." He folded his arms, which with him is the flourish preliminary to an oration. Here is his opinion, which I think sums up the American character pretty aptly:—
"The Americans. Well, nice, likeable fellers I've alwis found 'em. Don't 'alf make for my stall when they come out o' the station. Like it better, they say, than Lady Dardy Dinkum's canteen inside. And eat.... Fair clear me out every time they come. I get on with 'em top-'ole. There's something about 'em—I dunno what, some kind o' kiddishness—but not that exac'ly—a sort of——"
"Fresh delight in simple things," I suggested, drawing on my Pelmanized Bartlett.
"That's jest it. Mad about London, y'know. Why, I bin in London yers an' yers, and it don't worry me. Wants to know which is the oldest building in London, and where that bloke put 'is cloak in the mud for some Queen, an' where Cromwell was executed, and 'ow many generals is buried in Westminster Abbey. 'Ow should I know anything about Westminster Abbey? I live in Camden Town. I got me business t'attend to.
"There's a friend of mine, Mr. 'Ankin, the gentleman what takes the tickets at Baker Street—'e met two of 'em t'other day. Navy boys—from the country, I should think. D'you know, they spent the 'ole mornin' ridin' up and down the movin' staircase—yerce, and would 'ave spent the afternoon, too, on'y one of 'em tried to run up the staircase what was comin' down an'.... Well, I dessay it was good practice for 'em, but, as Mr. 'Ankin told 'em, it's safer to monkey with a U-boat than with a movin' staircase. And anyway, 'e'll be out of hospital before 'is ship's moved.
"Yerce, I like the Americans—what I've seen of 'em. No swank about 'em, y'know—officers an' men, just alike, all pals together. Confidence. That's what they got. Talks to yeh matey-like—know what I mean—man to man kind o' thing. Funny the way they looks at England, though. I s'pose they seen it on the map and it looked smallish. One feller come round the stall t'other night, an' 'e'd got two days' leave an' thought 'e could do Stratford-on-Avon, Salisbury Cathedral, Chester, Brighton, Edinburgh Castle, an' the spot o' blood where that American gel, Marry Queener Scots, murdered 'er boy—all in two days. 'Ustle, I believe they calls it over there. So I told 'im to start 'ustlin' right away, else, when 'e got back, 'e'd find 'imself waiting on the carpet, waiting for the good old C.B. Likeable boys, though. 'Ere's to 'em. No, I'll 'ave a ginger-ale. I don't drink me own coffee—not when I'm drinkin' anyone's 'ealth, like. Well,Attaboy, as they say over there."