Part 11

A gentle raillery was the note of intercourse between girls and boys. One of the little girls, a typist, I gathered, in a mercantile office, whispered to her boy that Victor was A Love, and added that she always did like men best when they were old and had grey hair. They were so ... kind of ... if he knew what she meant. She said she would most likely fall in love with a grey-haired man, and her boy said: "Yes, of course you would." Whereupon she told him not to be so sarcastic.

The attitude of gentlemen to ladies was also delightful. Some of the gentlemen were guilty of bad manners, in the Surbiton sense of the word. That is to say, they did not all do what was "done," and they very frequently did things that were not "done" by Good People. But everything they did was inspired by a consideration for the comfort of others. They committed gaucheries, but the fount thereof was kindliness.

The conversation was varied. Some talked frocks, some music, some picture-palaces, some odds-and-ends. Those who affected theatres stuck firmly to Victor, and lured him on to talk about the idols of the stage. The dear boy might have told them things ... he might have disillusioned their golden heads about certain actor-managers of whom he has had intimate experience; but he didn't, and I rather liked him for it. While more recitations and more music went round, he told them heroic stories about their heroes. He told them strange stories and beautiful stories and funny stories; but never, never disparaging stories. One saw their faces glow with wonder. Then the time came for him to work again. He certainly earned that seven-and-six. This time the Vicar was there, so he handed them "The Dream of Eugene Aram."

Again he got 'em. The girls shivered and moved nearer to their boys. He got his horror in voice and face and gesture and pauses. There was perfect silence while he did it. There was perfect silence for some seconds afterwards. Then came a rain of clapping, and the Vicar walked across to him and shook him by the hand, showering warm compliments upon him, and trusting that he would be kind enough to come again.

Then, while we drank coffee and handed cakes to the girls, the reverend gentleman stood on the rug before the fire and gave us an informal address. It was all very bright and homely, and the merry twinkle in the old man's eye when he saw the cluster of girls about Victor told us that he was very much alive to this world.

At half-past ten the meeting broke up, with a final effort by Victor in two of Albert Chevalier's songs. The girls pelted to the dressing-rooms and returned, robed for the street and radiant, and all anxious to shake hands and bid farewell to the Star. They literally danced round him, and fought to shake hands with him, and the boys fought with them. Then, when all had saluted him, each boy appropriated a girl. Those who were known tucked arms in arms and marched off. Those who were strangers approached deferentially, and said: "You got a friend, miss? If not ... m'I see you home?" and were at once elected.

Victor and the Vicar and the President and myself remained behind till the last, while Freddie and Harold "cleared up the mess," as they said. Then Victor winked at the two boys, and lured them to the passage. "Well, boys," he said, jingling his three half-crowns which had just been paid him, "what about it? A short one at 'The Falcon'—what?"

They really blushed. The honour was too much. "Oh—really—well—very kind of you, Mr. Maulever, I'm sure." They stammered through their hot smiles, but they came along, and after the short one at "The Falcon" they lingered a moment. They appeared nervous. It seemed that they had something on their minds. Harold looked at Freddie and Freddie looked at Harold, and Freddie said emphatically, "You." So Harold, very rapidly, turned and said—

"I was going t'say, Mr. Maulever—I mean, would you—ah—might I ask if you and your friend'd have another—with us?" He was obviously glad to get it over.

Victor smiled. "Well, laddie, it's a cold night. Dammit, we will have another."

So we did. As a matter of fact, we had three others; and in the loud passage of "The Falcon" we parted with the lads, who wrung Victor's hand, and said he'd given them a delightful evening, and they hoped he'd recite for their next Social, adding that he was a real sport.

I saw Victor to his 'bus, and as he leaped aboard he said he had enjoyed himself. He turned half-way up the stairs to cry his customary valediction.

"Si longtemps, old kiddo. Cling good and tight to the water-wagon!"

A WORKER'S NIGHT

THE ISLE OF DOGS

THE WORK CHILD

I

Fair flakes of wilding rose Entwine for Seventeen, With lovely leaves of violet That dares not live till fields forget The grey that drest their green with snows, And grow from grey to green.

And when the wreath is twining, Oh, prithee, have a care! Weave in no bloom of subtle smell; The simple ones she loves too well. Let violets on her neck lie shining, Wild rose in her hair.

And bring her rose-winged fancies, From shadowy shoals of dream, To clothe her in the wistful hour, When girlhood steals from bud to flower. Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, Bring her the faery Gleam!

II

At the world's gate she stands, Silent and very still; And lone as that one star that lights The delicate dusk of April nights. Oh, let love bind her holy hands, And fetter her from ill!

Her tumbled tresses cling Adown her like a veil. And cheeks and curls as sweetly chime As verses with a rounding rhyme. Surely there is not anything So valiant and so frail.

In faith and without fear, She brings to a rude throng, At war with beauty and with truth, The wonder of her blossomy youth. And faith shall wither to a sneer, And need shall silence song.

III

Her soul is a soft flame, Set in a world of grey. Help her, O Life, to keep its shrine That her white window's vigilant sign May pierce the tangled mists of shame, Where we have lost our way!

So linger at this day, My little maid serene! Or, since the dancing feet must go, Take Childhood with you still, and so Live in a year-worn world, but stay For ever Seventeen!

A WORKER'S NIGHT

THE ISLE OF DOGS

I am not of those who share the prevailing opinions of the Isle of Dogs: I do not see it as a haunt of greyness and distress. To the informed mind it is full and passionate. Every one of its streets is a sharp-flavoured adventure. Where others find insipidity I find salt and fire. Its shapes and sounds and silences and colours have allured me from first acquaintance. For here, remember, are the Millwall Docks, and here, too, is Cubitt Town.... Of course, like all adorable things, it has faults. I am ready to confess that the cheap mind, which finds Beauty only in that loathly quality called Refinement, will suffer many pains by a sojourn in its byways. It will fill them with ashen despair. In the old jolly days it was filthy; it was full of perils, smelly, insanitary, crumbling; but at least one could live in it. To-day it has been taken in hand by those remote Authorities who make life miserable for us. It is reasonably clean; it is secure; the tumbling cottages have been razed, and artisans' dwellings have arisen in their stead. Its high-ways—Glengall Road, East Ferry Road, Manchester Road—are but rows of uniform cottages, with pathetically small front gardens and frowzy "backs," which, throughout the week, flap dismally with the most intimate items of their households' underwear. Its horizon is a few grotto-like dust-shoots, decorated with old bottles and condensed-milk tins.

It is, I admit, the ugly step-child of parishes; but, then, I love all ugly step-children. It is gauche and ridiculous. It sprawls. It is permanently overhung with mist. It has all the virtues of the London County Council, and it is very nearly uninhabitable. Very nearly uninhabitable ... but not quite.

For here are many thousands of homes, and where a thousand homes are gathered together there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, my genteel lambs of Kensington, in this region of ashpits and waterways and broken ships and dry canals are girls and garlands and all the old lovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along its winding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, then life in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and lassitude, and, from the rich faces that pass you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it must always be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at the gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock of chattering magpies—the little work-girls—and see if I am not right.

And the colour.... There is nothing in the world like it for depth and glamour. I know no evenings so tender as those that gather about the Island: at once heartsome and subdued. The colour of street and sky and water, sprinkled with a million timid stars, is an ecstasy. You cannot name it. You see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, rose, silver. The clouds that flank the high-shouldered buildings and chimneys share in these subtle changes, and shift and shift from definite hues to some haunting scheme that was never seen in any colourman's catalogue.

On the night when I took Georgie round the Island a hard, clear frost was abroad. The skies glittered with steady stars. The streets seemed strangely wide and frank, clear-cut, and definite. A fat-faced moon lighted them. The waters were swift and limpid, flecked with bold light. The gay public-house at the Dock gates shone sharp, like a cut gem. Georgie had never toured the Island before, and he enjoyed it thoroughly. As we stood on the shuddering bridge the clear night spread such a stillness over the place that you could almost hear a goods train shunt; and we stood there watching the berthing of a big P. & O. for many pensive minutes.

By the way, you ought to know Georgie; he is a London character. Perhaps you do, for he has thousands of acquaintances. He knows all that there is to know about London—or, at least, the real London, by which phrase I exclude the foreign quarters and the Isle of Dogs. These he does not regard as part of London. His acquaintance among waiters alone is a matter for wonder. At odd times you may meet him in a bar with a stranger, an impressive-looking personage who, you conjecture, is an attache of a foreign Embassy. But no; you do him an injustice; he is greater than that. Georgie introduces you with a histrionic flourish—

"This is Mr. Burke—young Tommy Burke. This is Carlo, of Romano's." Or, "This is young Tommy. This is Frank from the Cornhill Chop House," or Henry from Simpson's, or Enrico from Frascati's, or Jules from Maxim's.

I believe that Georgie knows more about food and feeding than any man in London. I don't mean that he could seriously compete with Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham Davis. He couldn't draw up a little dinner for you at the Ritz or Claridge's or Dieudonne's. But, then, here again he shows his prejudices; for he doesn't regard a dinner at the Ritz or Claridge's as anything to do with eating. His is the quieter sphere; but he has made it his own. There is something uncanny about his knowledge in this direction. He knows where you can get a meal at two o'clock in the morning, and he can tell you exactly what you will get. He can tell you in an instant what is the prime dish at any obscure little eating-house and the precise moment at which it is on the table. He knows the best house for cabbage, and the house to be avoided if you are thinking of potatoes. He knows where to go for sausage and mashed, and he can reel off a number of places which must be avoided when their haricot mutton is on. He knows when the boiled beef is most a la mode at Wilkinson's, when the pudding at the "Cheshire Cheese" is just so, and when the undercut at Simpson's is most to be desired. You meet him, say, on Tuesday, and, in course of conversation, you wonder where to lunch. "Tuesday," he will murmur, "Tuesday. What d'you fancy? It's fowl-and-bacon day at 'The Mitre.' That's always good. Or it's stewed-steak day at 'The Old Bull,' near the Bank; beautiful steak; done to a turn at one-fifteen. Or it's curry day at the Oriental place in Holborn, if you like curries. Or it's chop toad-in-the-hole day at Salter's; ready at two o'clock. The one in Strand's the best. But don't go sharp at two. Wait till about two-twenty. The batter ain't quite what it should be at two sharp; but just after that it's perfect. Perfect, my boy!"

We crossed the bridge to a running accompaniment from Georgie about the times he had had in the old days before I was born or thought of—he is always flinging this in my face. Motor-'buses were roaring through the long, empty streets, carrying loads of labourers from the docks to their northern homes, or work-girls from the northern factories to their homes in the Island. The little, softly lighted toy and sweetstuff shops gleamed upon us out of the greyness, and the tins of hot saveloys and baked apples, which the hawkers were offering, smelt appetizing. From tiny stalls outside the sweetstuff shops you may still purchase those luscious delicacies of your childhood which seem to have disappeared from every other quarter of London. I mean the toffee-apple about which, if you remember, Vesta Victoria used to sing so alluringly.

I have two friends residing here—one at Folly Wall and one in Havana Street. I decided that we would call on the latter, so Georgie stopped at "The Regent," and took in a bottle of Red Seal for my friend and a little drop of port for the missus—"just by way," as he explained, "of being matey." My friend, a gateman at one of the dock stations, had just gone home, and was sitting down to his tea. There is no doubt that the housewives of the Island know how to prepare their old men's tea. In nearly every house in this district you will find, at about six or seven o'clock, in the living-room of the establishment, a good old hot stew going, or tripe and onions, or fish and potatoes, or a meat-pudding; and this, washed down with a pint of tea, is good enough hunting for any human. Old Johnnie comes from the docks in his dirty working clothes; but before ever he ventures to sit down to table he goes into the scullery, strips, and has what he calls a "slosh down," afterwards reappearing in a clean print shirt and serge trousers. Then, in this comfortable attire, he attacks whatever the missus has got for him, and studies the evening paper, to ascertain, firstly, what the political (i.e. labour) situation is, and, secondly, what's good for to-morrow's big race; for Johnnie, quite innocently, likes to have a shilling on all the classics—the Lincoln, the Cambridgeshire, the Caesarewitch, the Gold Cup, City and Sub., the Oaks and the Derby, and so on.

After his meal he shaves and puts on a collar. Sometimes he will take the missus to the pictures, or, if it is Saturday, he will go marketing with her in Poplar, or in the summer for a moonlight sail on the Thames steamers. Other nights he attends his slate club, or his union, or drops in at one or other of the cheery bars on the Island, to meet his pals and talk shop. The Isle of Dogs, I may tell you, is a happy hunting-ground for all those unhappy creatures who can find no congenial society in their own circles: I mean superior Socialists, Christian workers, Oxford and Cambridge settlement workers, and the immature intellectuals. There are literally dozens and dozens of churches and chapels on the Island, and dozens of halls and meeting-places where lectures are given. The former do not capture Johnnie, but the latter do, and he will often wash and brush up of an evening to hear some young boy from Oxford deliver a thoroughly uninformed exposition of Karl Marx or Nietzsche. The Island is particularly happy in being so frequently patronized by those half-baked ladies and gentlemen, the Fabians, who have all the vices of the middle classes, and—what is more terrible—all the virtues of the middle classes.

The majority of Socialists, if you observe, are young people of the well-to-do middle classes. They embrace the blue-serge god, not from any conviction, not from any sense of comradeship with their overworked and underpaid fellows, but because Socialism gives them an excuse for escape from their petty home life and pettier etiquettes. As Socialists they can have a good time, they can go where they choose, do as they choose, and come home at what hour they choose without fearing the wrath of that curious figure whom they name The Pater. They have merely to explain that they are Socialists, and their set say, "Oh ... Socialists ... yes, of course." Socialism opens to them the golden gates of that Paradise, Bohemia. The freedom of the city is thus presented to them; and they have found it so convenient and so inexpensive that they have adopted Socialism in their thousands. But observe them in the company of the horny-handed, the roughshod, and the ill-spoken; they are either ill at ease or frankly patronizing. They are Bohemians among aristocrats and aristocrats among Bohemians.

Johnnie is just beginning to be noted at their meetings as a debater of some importance. In fact, after the lecture, he will rise and deliver questions so shrewd and penetrating that the young folk of Sidcup and Blackheath and Hampstead have found it a saving to their personal dignity to give him a seat on the platform, where, of course, he is not only rendered harmless to them but is an encouragement to other sons of the soil in the audience.

It is in the region of the Island that most of the battles take place between organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there be any industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees—gaily they trip along and take charge of the hapless workers, until the poor fellows or girls are hustled this way and that, driven, coerced, commanded, and counter-commanded till, in desperation, they take refuge, one and all, in the nearest bar. Then the Fabians, the Social Democrats, the Clarionettes, the Syndicalists, the Extremists, the Arbitrators, and the Union leaders return to Blackheath and Sidcup and Bedford Park, crying that it is useless to attempt to help the poor; they won't be helped: they are hopeless dipsomaniacs.

Here were organized those Unemployed marches which made our streets so cheery a few years ago. I once joined Johnnie on a tramp with one of these regiments, and it was the most spiritless march I have ever been in. The men didn't want to march. It was the Social Service darlings who wanted to form them into a pretty procession, and lead them all round London as actual proof of the Good that was being done among the Right People. We started at nine o'clock on a typically London morning. The day was neither cold nor warm, neither light nor dark. The sky was an even stretch of watery grey, and the faces that passed us were not kindly. Mostly they suggested impaired digestions or guilty consciences. We had a guard of honour of about ten hefty constables, and for us, as for the great ones of the town, the traffic was held up that we might pass. Among the crowd our appointed petitioners, with labelled collecting-boxes, worked with subdued zeal, and above the rumble of the 'buses and the honk-honk of motors and the frivolous tinkle of hansoms rose their harsh, insistent rattle. Now and again a gust of wind would send a dozen separate swirls of dust into our eyes. People stared at us much as one stares at an Edgware Road penny-museum show. We were not men. We were a procession of the Unemployed: An Event. We were a jolly lot. Most of us stared at the ground or the next man's back; only a few gazed defiantly around. None talked. Possibly a few were thinking, and if any of them were imaginative, that slow shuffle might have suggested a funeral march of hopes and fears. There was a stillness about it that was unpleasant; a certain sickness in the air. I think the crowd must have wondered what we were going to do next. You may punch an Englishman's nose, and heal the affront with apologies and a drink. You may call him a liar, and smooth over the incident by the same means. You may take bread out of his mouth, and still he may be pacified. But when you touch his home and the bread of the missus and the kids, you are touching something sacred and thereby inviting disaster; and I think the crowd was anticipating some concerted assault. As a matter of fact, we were the tamest lot of protesters you ever saw. I don't think any of us realized that he had anything sacred.