Kitabı oku: «Out and About London», sayfa 4
On ordinary nights, when we felt still fresh at eleven o'clock, we would take a car to Mentone, cross the frontier into Italy (which was not then at war), and spend a few cheery hours at Bordighera or San Remo, which were nightless. Then back to Monte Carlo at about five, to bed, and up again at nine, with no feeling of fatigue. It was curious to note how, under that sharp sunshine and keen night sky, all moral values were changed, or wholly obliterated. The first breath of the youthful company at the pension blew all London cobwebs away. It was all so abandoned, yet so sweet and wholesome; and, by contrast, the English seaside resort, where the girls play at "letting themselves go," was a crude and shameful farce. Whatever happened at Monaco seemed to be right; nothing was wrong except frigidity and unkindness.
My dear Italian Mama said to me one evening at dinner, when I had (in the English sense) disgraced myself by a remark straight from the heart: —
"M'sieu Thomas, on m'a dit que les anglais ont froid. C'est pas vrai!"
No, dear Mamina; but it was true before I stayed at the Pension Poggio at Beausoleil.
My work with the millionaire spread itself over two months; then, with a fat wad, I was free to return. It was not until I went to the Consulate to get my passport visé that I discovered how many war-time laws of France I had broken. I had not registered myself on arrival; I had not reported myself periodically; and I had not obtained a permis de séjour. The Consul informed me cheerfully that heaps of trouble would be waiting for me when I went to the Mairie to get my laissez-passer, without which I could not buy a railway ticket. However, after being stood in a corner for two hours until all other travellers had received attention, a laissez-passer was thrown at me on my undertaking to leave Monte Carlo that night. A gendarme accompanied me to the station to see that I did so.
At Paris, a few hours spent with the police, the military, Hôtel-de-Ville, and the British Consulate resulted in permission to kick my heels there for a day or so.
A few mornings later arrived the millionaire's precious MS., which I had left behind so that he might revise it, with a message to hustle. I hustled. I reached London the same night. Next morning I negotiated with a publisher. In two days it was in the printer's hands and in a fortnight it was in the bookshops; and I was again out of a job.
IN SEARCH OF A SHOW
I have been looking for a needle in a haystack, and I have not found it. I have been looking for an hour's true entertainment in London's theatres and music-halls during this spring season of 1918.
The tag of Mr. Gus Elen's old song, "'E dunno where 'e are," very aptly describes the condition of the regular theatre-goer to-day. What would the old laddies of the Bodega-cheese days have thought, had any prophesied that at one swift step the Oxford and the Pavilion would simultaneously move into the ranks of the "legitimate;" that His Majesty's Theatre would be running a pantomime; that smoking would be allowed in the Lyceum, the Comedy, the Vaudeville, and the Garrick? Many people have lost their individuality by being merged into one or other war-movement since 1914; many streets have entirely lost those distinctive features which enable us to recognize them at one glance or by sound or smell; but nowhere has the war more completely smashed personality than in theatre-land.
In the old days (one must use that pathetic phrase in speaking of ante-1914), the visitor to London knew precisely the type of entertainment and the type of audience he would find at any given establishment. To-day, one figures his bewilderment – verily, 'e dunno where 'e are. Formerly, he could be sure that at the Garrick he would find Mr. Bourchier playing a Bourchieresque part. At His Majesty's he would find just what he wanted – or would want what he found – for going to His Majesty's was not a matter of dropping in: it was a pious function. At the Alhambra or the Empire he would be sure of finding excellent ballet at about ten o'clock, when he could sip his drink, stroll round the promenade, and leave when he felt like it. At the time I write he finds Mr. Bourchier playing low comedy at a transformed music-hall, and at the Alhambra or the Empire he finds a suburban crowd, neatly seated in rows – father, mother and flappers – watching a quite innocuous entertainment.
Managers were long wont to classify in their minds the "Garrick" audience, the "Daly" audience, the "Adelphi" audience, the "Haymarket" audience; and plays would be refused by a manager on the ground that "our audience wouldn't stand it; try the Lyric." To-day they are all in the melting-pot, and the poor habitué of the So-and-so Theatre has to take what is given him, and be mighty thankful for it.
At one time I loved a show, however cheap its kind; but in these days, after visiting a war-time show and suffering the feeling of assisting at some forbidden rite, I always wish I had wasted the evening in some other manner. Since 1914 the theatres have not produced one show that any sober man would pay two pence to see. The stuff that has been produced has paid its way because the bulk of the public is drunk – with war or overwork. The story of the stage since 1914 may be given in one word – "Punk." Knowing that we are all too preoccupied with solemn affairs to examine very closely our money's-worth, and knowing that the boys on leave are not likely to be too hypercritical, the theatrical money-lords – with one noble exception – have taken advantage of the situation to fub us off with any old store-room rubbish. We have dozens of genuine music-hall comedians on the stage to-day, but they are all slacking. Some of them get absorbed by West End shows, and at once, when they appear on the gigantic American stages of some of our modern theatres, surrounded by crowds of elephantine women, they lose whatever character and spontaneity they had. Others give the bulk of their time and brains to earning cheap notoriety by raising funds for charities or cultivating allotments – both commendable activities, but not compatible with the serious business of cheering the public. Gradually, the individual is being frozen out, and the stages are loaded with crowds of horsey, child-aping women, called by courtesy a beauty chorus; the show being called, also by courtesy, a revue. These shows resemble a revue as much as the short stories of popular magazines resemble a conte. They dazzle the eye and blast the ear, and, instead of entertaining, exhaust.
The artists have, allowing for human nature, done their best under trying circumstances; but playing to an audience of overseas khaki and tired working-people, who applaud their most maladroit japes, has had the effect of wearing them down. They no longer work. They take the easiest way, knowing that any remark about the Kaiser, Old Bill, meat-cards, or the Better 'Ole is sure of a laugh.
One solitary example of money's-worth in war-time I found – but that is outside the lists of vaudeville or drama. I mean Sir Thomas Beecham's operative enterprise. Beginning, in 1915, to develop his previous tentative experiments – fighting against indifference, prejudice, often against active opposition – he went steadily on; and it is he whom our men must thank if, on returning, they find in England something besides factories and barracks. There is no man who, amid this welter of blood and hate, has performed work of higher national importance. While every effort was made to stifle or stultify every movement that made towards sanity and vision, he went doggedly forward, striving to save from the wreckage some trifle of sweetness and loveliness for those who have ears to hear. Had certain good people had their way, he, his ideals, his singers, his orchestra and his band instruments would have been flung into the general cesspool, to lie there and rot. But he won through; and I think only that enemy of civilization, the screaming, flag-wagging patriot, will disagree with a famous Major-General who, in full war-paint, stood at my side in the theatre bar between the acts of Tristan, and, turning upon a querulous civilian who had snorted against Wagner, cried angrily: —
"Nonsense, sir, nonsense. War is war. And music is music."
After years of struggling, Beecham has made it possible for an English singer to sing to English audiences under his English name, and has proved what theatrical and music-hall managers never attempt to prove: that England can produce her own native talent in music and drama, without taking the fourth-rate and fifth-rate, as well as the first-rate, material of America and the Continent. He has shown himself at once a philanthropist and a patriot. In none of his productions do we find signs of that cheap philosophy that "anything will do for war-time." Before the arrival of his company, opera in London was a mere social function which (except from the point of view of the galleryite) had little to do with music. People went to Covent Garden not to listen to music, but to be seen; just as they went to the Savoy or to the Carlton to be seen, not to procure nourishment. The Beecham opera is first and last a matter of music.
So, Sir Thomas, a few thousand of us take off our hats to you. I think we should all like to send you every morning a little bunch of violets, or something equally valueless, but symbolic of the fine things you have given us, of the silver lining you have disclosed to us in these overclouded days.
VODKA AND VAGABONDS
Last year London lost two of its quaintest characters – Robertson, of Australia, that pathetic old man who haunted the Strand and carried in his hat a clumsily scrawled card announcing that he was searching for his errant daughter, and "Please Do Not Give Me Money"; and "Spring Onions," the Thames Police Court poet.
Now the race of London freaks seems ended. Craig, the poet of the Oval Cricket ground; Spiv Bagster; the Chiswick miser; Onions and Robertson; all are gone. Hunnable is confined; and G. N. Curzon isn't looking any too well. Even that prolific poet, Rowbotham, self-styled "the modern Homer," has been keeping quiet lately. It took a universal war, though, to make him nod.
I met "Spring" (privately, Mr. W. G. Waters) once or twice at Stepney. He was a vagrant minstrel of the long line of Villon and Cyrano de Bergerac. His anniversary odes were known to thousands of newspaper readers. He was the self-appointed Laureate of the nation. He celebrated not only himself, his struggles and successes, but the pettier happenings of the day, such as the death of a king, the accession of a king, or the marriage of some royal couple. You remember his lines on the Coronation of Edward VII: —
The King, His Majesty, and may him Heaven bless,
He don't put no side on in his dress.
For, though he owns castles and palaces and houses,
He wears, just like you and me, coats and waistcoats and trousis.
The character of the genial Edward in four lines. Could it have been better said?
Not to know Spring argues yourself unknown. He might have stepped from the covers of Dekker's Gull's Hornbook. He was a child of nature. I can't bring myself to believe that he was born of woman. I believe the fairies must have left him under the gooseberry – no, under the laurel bush, for he wore the laurel, the myrtle, and the bay as one born to them. He also, on occasion, wore the vine-leaf; and surely that is now an honour as high as the laurel, since all good fellowship and kindliness and conviviality have been sponged from our social life. We have been made dull and hang-dog by law. I wonder what Spring would have said about that law in his unregenerate days – Spring, who was "in" thirty-nine times for "D. and D." He would have written a poem about it, I know: a poem that would have rung through the land, and have brought to camp the numerous army of Boltists, Thresholdists, and Snortists.
Oh, Spring has been one of the boys in his time, believe me. But in his latter years he was dull and virtuous; he kept the pledge of teetotalism for sixteen years, teetotalism meaning abstention from alcoholic liquors. This doesn't mean that he wasn't like all other teetotalers, sometimes drunk. The pious sages who make our by-laws seem to forget that it is as easy to get drunk on tea and coffee as on beer; the only difference being that beer makes you pleasantly drunk, and tea and coffee make you miserably drunk.
If you knew Spring in the old days, you wouldn't have known him towards the end – and I don't suppose he would have known you. For in his old age he was a Person. He was odd messenger at Thames Police Court. In November, 1898 Spring, who was then the local reprobate, took to heart the kindly admonitions of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at Thames, and signed the pledge of total abstinence. Ever afterwards, on the anniversary of that great day. Spring would hand to the magistrate a poem in celebration of the fact that he had "kept off it" for another year.
I visited Spring just before his death in his lodging – lodging stranger than that of any Montmartre poet.
The Thames Police Court is in Arbour Square, Stepney, and Spring lived near his work. Through many mean streets I tracked his dwelling, and at last I found it. I climbed flights of broken stairs in a high forbidding house. I stumbled over steps and unexpected turns, and at last I stood with a puffy, red-faced, grey-whiskers, stocky old fellow, in a candle-lit garret whose one window looked over a furtively noisy court.
It was probably his family name of Waters that drove him to drink in his youth, since when, he has been known as the man who put the tea in "teetotal." In his room I noticed a bed of nondescript colour and make-up, a rickety chest of drawers (in which he kept his treasures), two doubtful chairs, a table, a basin, and bits of food strewn impartially everywhere. A thick, limp smell hung over all, and the place seemed set a-jigging by the flickering light of the candle. There I heard his tale. He sat on the safe chair while I flirted with the other.
It was on the fortieth occasion that he yielded to Sir John Dickinson's remonstrances and signed the pledge, and earned the respect of all connected with that court where he had made so many appearances. All through that Christmas and New Year he had, of course, a thin time; it was suffocating to have to refuse the invitation: "Come on, Spring – let's drink your health!" But what did Spring do? Did he yield? Never. When he found he was thirsty, he sat down and wrote a poem, and by the time he had found a rhyme for Burton, the thirst had passed. Then, too, everybody took an interest in him and gave him work and clothes, and so on. Oh, yes, it's a profitable job being a reformed vagabond in Stepney.
He was employed on odd messages and errands for the staff at Thames Police Court, and visited the police-stations round about to do similar errands, such as buying breakfast for the unfortunates who have been locked up all night and are about to face the magistrate. Whatever an overnight prisoner wants in the way of food he may have (intoxicants barred), if he cares to pay for it, and Spring was the agile fellow who fetched it for him; and many stray coppers (money, not policemen) came his way.
All these things he told me as I sat in his mephitic lodging. Spring, like his brother Villon, was a man of all trades; no job was too "odd" for him to take on. Holding horses, taking messages from court to station, writing odes on this and that, opening and shutting doors, and dashing about in his eightieth year just like a newsboy – Spring was certainly a credit to Stepney. On my mentioning that I myself made songs at times, he dashed off the following impromptu, as I was falling down his crazy stairs at midnight: —
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-potato can, 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 a way 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 the Thames 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 or three 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 the value 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 sifted until 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 at once of Marion Crawford's Cigarette-maker's Romance and 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 her own 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 of the 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 Stepney to 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 your indifferent nose, and under her lucent skin beat the imperious pulses of youth.
