Nights in London Part 18

From the window came one of the Oxford voices. "_No_ EARTHLY, dear old girl. You'll _never_ sing. Your _values_, you know, and _all_ that are...."

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

_STEPNEY CAUSEWAY_

_Beyond the pleading lip, the reaching hand, Laughter and tear; Beyond the grief that none would understand; Beyond all fear.

Dreams ended, beauty broken, Deeds done, and last words spoken, Quiet she lies._

_Far, far from our delirious dark and light, She finds her sleep.

No more the noisy silences of night Shall hear her weep.

The blossomed boughs break over Her holy breast to cover From any eyes.

Till the stark dawn shall drink the latest star, So let her be.

O Love and Beauty! She has wandered far And now comes home to thee._

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

The Russian quarter always saddens me. For one thing, it has a.s.sociations which scratch my heart regularly every month when my affairs take me into those parts. Forgetting is the most wearisome of all pains to which we humans are subject; and for some of us there is so much to forget. For some of us there is Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, and the devastating loveliness of Isabel. For another thing, its atmosphere is so depressingly Slavonic. It is as dismal and as overdone as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. How shall I give you the sharp flavour of it, or catch the temper of its streets?

It seems impossible that one should ensnare its elusive spirit. Words may come, but they are words, hard and stiff-necked and pedestrian. One needs symbols and b.u.t.terflies.

Beauty is a strange bird. Hither and thither she flies, and settles where she will; and men will say that she is found here and there--sometimes in Perugia, sometimes in Mayfair, sometimes in the Himalaya. I have known men who found her in the dark melancholy of Little Russia, and I can understand them. For beauty appears, too, in various guise; and some men adore her in silks and some in rags. There are girls in this quarter who will smite the heart out of you, whose beauty will cry itself into your very blood. White's Row and the fastnesses of Stepney do not produce many choice blooms; there are no lilies in these gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic to regard or to talk with. They are not even clean. The secrets of their toilet are not known to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever appear in large quant.i.ties. And yet.... They walk or lounge, languorous and heavy-lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of smouldering fire in their drowsy gaze. Rich, olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either gloomy or bra.s.sy, and caressing voices with the lisp of Bethnal Green. You may see them about the streets which they have made their own, carrying loads of as enchanting curls as Murger's Mimi.

But don't run away with the idea that they are wistful, or luscious, or romantic; they are not. Go and mix with them if you nurse that illusion.

Wistfulness and romance are in the atmosphere, but the people are practical ... more practical and much less romantic than Mr. John Jenkinson of Golder's Green.

You may meet them in the restaurants of Little Montagu Street, Osborn Street, and the byways off Brick Lane. The girls are mostly cigarette-makers, employed at one of the innumerable tobacco factories in the district. Cigarette-maker recalls "Carmen" and Marion Crawford's story; but here are only the squalid and the beastly. Brick Lane and the immediate neighbourhood hold many factories, each with a fine odour--bed-flock, fur, human hair, and the slaughter-house. Mingle these with sheep-skins warm from the carca.s.s, and the decaying refuse in every gutter, and you will understand why I always smoke cigars in Spitalfields. In these cafes I have met on occasion those seriocomics, Louise Michel, Emma Goldmann, and Chicago May. Beilis, the hero of the blood-ritual trial, was here some months ago; and Enrico Malatesta has visited, too. Among the men--fuzzy-bearded, shifty-eyed fellows--there are those who have been to Siberia and back. But do not ask them about Siberia, nor question how they got back. There are some things too disgusting even to talk about. Siberia is not exciting; it is filthy.

But you may sit among them, the men and the dark, gazelle-eyed girls; and you may take caviare, tea-and-lemon, and black bread; and conversation will bring you a proffered cigarette.

It was in these streets that I first met that giant of letters, Mr. W.

G. Waters, better known to the newspaper public as "Spring Onions," but unfortunately I did not meet him in his gay days, but in his second period, his regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a fearsome rival in the subtle art of Poesy. I stood him a cup of cocoa--for you know, if you read your newspaper, that Spring was a teetotaller. He signed the pledge, at the request of Sir John d.i.c.kinson, then magistrate at Thames Police Court, in 1898, and it was his proud boast that he had kept it ever since. He was then seventy-nine. His father died of drink at thirty-seven, and Dean Farrar once told Spring that his case was excusable, since it was hereditary. But, although Spring went to prison at the age of thirteen for drunkenness, and has "been in" thirty-nine times, he didn't die at thirty-seven. I wonder what the moral is? His happiest days, he a.s.sured me, were spent in old Clerkenwell Prison, now Clerkenwell Post Office, and on one occasion, as he was the only prisoner who could read, he was permitted to entertain his companions by extracts from _Good Words_, without much effect, he added, as most of them are in and out even now. One important factor in the making of his grand resolution was that a girl he knew in Stepney, who was so far gone that even the Court missionary had given her up, came to him one Christmastime. She was in the depths of misery and hunger.

"Spring," she said, "give me a job!"

So Spring gave her the job of cleaning out his one room, for which she was to receive half a crown. She obeyed him; and when he returned, and looked under the floor where he stored his savings from the sale of his poems (nearly seven pounds) they also had been cleaned.

That settled it. Spring decided to cut all his acquaintances, but he could only do that successfully by some very public step. So he went to Sir John d.i.c.kinson and signed the pledge in his presence. Said he--

"And now, I find that after fifteen years of teetotalism, I write better poetry. Every time I feel I want a drink, I say to myself: 'Spring--sit down and write a poem!'"

He was then messenger at Thames Police Court, enjoying the friendship and interest of all. He read me about a dozen of his lighter lyrics.

Here is one of the finer gems:--

How many a poet would like to have Letters from royalty--prince, king, and queen; But, like some insignificant ocean wave, They are pa.s.sed over, mayhap never seen.

But when I myself address good Royals, And send them verses from my fertile brain, See how they thank me very much for my flowing strain!

In proof of which he would dig out letters from King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and Queen Mary.

One of these days I am going to do a book about those London characters without reference to whom our daily newspapers are incomplete. I mean people like the late lamented Craig, the poet of the Oval Cricket Ground, Captain Hunnable, of Ilford, Mr. Algernon Ashton, Spiv. Bagster, of Westminster, that gay farceur, "D. S. Windell," Stewart Gray, the Nature enthusiast. But first and foremost must come--Spring Onions.

On the southern side of the quarter is Sidney Street, of sinister memory. You remember the siege of Sidney Street? A great time for Little Russia. You may remember how the police surrounded that little Fort Chabrol. You may remember how the deadly aim of Peter the Painter and his fellow-conspirators got home on the force again and again. You remember how the police, in their helplessness against such fatalistic defiance of their authority, appealed to Government, and how Government sent down a detachment of the Irish Guards. There was a real Cabinet Minister in it, too; he came down in his motor-car to superintend manoeuvres and compliment gallant officers on their strategy. And yet, in that great contest of four men versus the Rest of England, it was the Rest of England that went down; for Fort Chabrol stood its ground and quietly laughed. They were never beaten, they never surrendered. When they had had enough, they just burnt the house over themselves, and ...

hara-kiri.... Of course, it was all very wicked; it is impossible to justify them in any way. In Bayswater and all other haunts of unbridled chast.i.ty they were tortured, burnt alive, stewed in oil, and submitted to every conceivable penalty for their saucy effrontery. Yet, somehow, there was a touch about it, this spectacle of four men defying the law and order of the greatest country in the world, which thrilled every man with any devil in him. Peter the Painter is a hero to this day.

I had known the quarter for many years before it interested me. It was not until I was prowling around on a Fleet Street a.s.signment that I learnt to hate it. A murder had been committed over a cafe in Lupin Street: a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and with a s.e.x interest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for the London Letter, do something good on the Va.s.siloff murder.

It was a night of cold rain, and the pavements were dashed with smears of light from the shop windows. Through the streaming streets my hansom leaped; and as I looked from the window, and noted the despondent biliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that the gra.s.s withereth, the flower fadeth.

I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, continuing the tradition which had been instilled into me by my predecessor on the London Letter, I turned into one of the hostelries and had a vodka to keep the cold out.

Little Russia was shutting up. The old shawled women, who sit at every corner with huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, were departing beneath umbrellas. The stalls of Osborn Street, usually dressed with foreign-looking confectionery, were also retiring. Indeed, everybody seemed to be slinking away, and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burn me with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all publics which desired to read about murders. I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the least good; so I had another, and gazed through the kaleidoscopic window, rushing with rain, at the cheerful world that held me.

Oh, so sad it is, this quarter! By day the streets are a depression, with their frowzy doss-houses and their vapour-baths. Grey and sickly is the light. Grey and sickly, too, are the leering shops, and grey and sickly are the people and the children. Everything has followed the gra.s.s and the flower. Childhood has no place; for above the roofs you may see the sharp points of a Council School. Such games as happen are played but listlessly, and each little face is smirched. The gaunt warehouses hardly support their lopping heads, and the low, beetling, gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to brood on nights of bitter adventure. Fit objects for contempt by day they may be, but when night creeps upon London, the hideous darkness that can almost be touched, then their faces become very powers of terror, and the cautious soul, wandered from the comfort of the main streets, walks and walks in a frenzy, seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes a hoa.r.s.e laugh will break sharp on his ear. Then he runs.

Well, I finished my second, and then sauntered out. As I was pa.s.sing a cruel-looking pa.s.sage, a gang of lads and girls stepped forward. One of the girls looked at me. Her face had the melancholy of Russia, but her voice was as the voice of c.o.c.kaigne. For she spoke and said--

"Funny-looking little guy, ain't you?"

I suppose I was. So I smiled and said that we were as G.o.d made us.

She giggled....

I said I felt sure I should do no good on the Va.s.siloff murder. I didn't. For just then the other four marched ahead, crying, "Come on!"

And, surprised, yet knowing of no good reason for being surprised, I felt the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined the main column.

That is one of London's greatest charms: it is always ready to toss you little encounters of this sort, if you are out for them.

Across the road we went, through mire and puddle, and down a long, winding court. At about midway our friends disappeared, and, suddenly drawn to the right, I was pushed from behind up a steep, fusty stair.

Then I knew where we were going. We were going to the tenements where most of the Russians meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these places is a little more cheerful than that of the cafes--if you can imagine a Russian ever rising to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over the milliners' shops, and thither their friends resort. Every establishment here has a piano, for music, with them, is a sombre pa.s.sion rather than a diversion. You will not hear comic opera, but if you want to climb the lost heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and listen to a piano, lost in the high glooms, wailing the heart of Chopin or Rubinstein or Glazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist girls, while the ghost of Peter the Painter parades the naphthaed highways.

At the top of the stair I was pushed into a dark, fusty room, and guided to a low, fusty sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, and a lamp was lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radiance on its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls and boys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently very much at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on the bed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in c.o.c.kney toughs. I doubt if you would have admired the girls at that moment.

The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then brought a tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watching the others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon the ladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes.