THE LONDON SPY 

A Book of Town Travels 


BY 


THOMAS BURKE 































NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




THE LONDON SPY. II 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

f 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I In the Thick of It 9 

II In THE Streets of Film-Land ... 58 

III In the Streets of Rich Men ... 83 

IV In the Streets of the Simple . . .113 
V In the Shops and the Markets . . 140 

VI In the Streets of Cyprus-on-Thames . 167 

VII In the Streets of Good Company . .179 

VIII In the Street Called Queer . . . 214 

IX In the Streets of the Far East . . 238 

X In the Street of Beautiful Children . 256 

XI In the Streets of Don't-Care . . . 292 



THE LONDON SPY 



THE LONDON SPY 

— I— 

IN THE THICK OF IT 

I HOPE the title of this book will not mislead 
you. I have no shocking revelations with which 
to humour you; no exclusive dinner-table confessions 
to disclose; only a few little pictures of the streets to 
offer you, pictures snapped as we wander among the 
dim alleys or mix with the thickest crowd, watching 
the road-men at work in the Strand, staring up at 
trapeze artists repairing telephone wires, or on the 
embankment watching the barges go by. . . . That 
sort of spying. . . . 

Of all our poets who have attempted In one way 
or another to celebrate London in song, none of the 
illustrious hundreds, from William Dunbar onward, 
has, I think, got so near the heart of the matter 
as that obscure lyrist, who sang discordantly, 
some fifteen years ago, to the mouth-organ rather 
than the lyre. How does the doggerel go? 

Let's all go down the Strand ! 

('Ave a banana!) 
Let's all go down the Strand ! 

I'll be leader, you can march behind, 

Come with me and see what we can find. . . . 
9 



10 THE LONDON SPY 

The very London, I think. Not the complete 
London : only a tiny facet of a many-sided stone ; but 
large enough to throw up a flash that signals London 
to the remote corners of the world, as Tipperary 
once signalled England. The Strand is by no means 
the gayest street in London. To-day, it is rather 
business-like. There is none of the caddish larking 
of years ago : it is no longer the playground of 
rich ruffians from the Army and Universities. But 
its business is the business of pleasure, and its fund 
of delight shows no sign of w^eakenlng. What it 
wants in sparkle is supplied by exuberance, and the 
banana belongs to it. The banana, a somewhat 
solemn fruit, was made, by this song, one of that 
facetious company of tripe, cheese, kippers, lodgers, 
and the clown's string of sausages: symbols of 
Cockaigne. 

And that's what I've been after — the London 
banana, in its haunts and humours. 

For every Cockney London has a personal and 
secret significance. Each of us sees it from a differ- 
ent angle. In each of us it evokes differing emo- 
tions, Intimate and unutterable moods. But I think 
Everyman's London holds moving crowds, lights 
glaring or glittering or glowing, profuse shop-win- 
dows, street-markets, dim alleys, long roads of dark 
houses running to mysterious ends, the Strand, Pic- 
cadilly Circus, and the banana. For we have all, 
once at least, been down the Strand in what I may call 



IN THE THICK OF IT 11 

the banana mood. We have each, at some time, 
made one of nineteen jolly good boys. The 
hitiddley-hi-ti spirit has a knack of seizing you with- 
out warning in London, when the shops are open, 
and the boys and the girls are out, and the 'buses 
glide and impetuous taxis dart and double, and 
there's a "something" in the air — a taste of Spring 
or the bite of frost. Then the joy of the streets 
comes upon you, and you are in tune with the crowd. 
You don't care if it snows. You're ready to change 
hats with anybody. 

This mood gives no warning of Its approach. It 
may come upon you before lunch as hotly as after 
dinner. It may attack you in Grosvenor Square as 
successfully as in the Strand; in Stratford Broad- 
way or Cromwell Road; In Soho or WIgmore Street. 
Let there be three of you, good wanderers or loung- 
ers, and a fine evening (if you are young, a wet even- 
ing will not extinguish your squibs and crackers) , and 
the spirit of the banana will get you if you don't 
watch out. For joy of London Is no matter of liber- 
ties or restrictions, of lights and drinks and suppers 
and late hours. It Is within you and the streets, al- 
ways; and my London mornings and afternoons are 
as crowded with happy hazards as Piccadilly Circus 
at seven o'clock in the evening. Although the 
authorities treat the citizens of London as the author- 
ities of Oxford treat the schoolboys under their 
charge, they can't confiscate my tuck-box of London 



12 THE LONDON SPY 

Delight. They wouldn't know where to look for it. 

London's banana is always waiting to be eaten. 
At all hours I may enjoy curious encounters, the urge 
of the crowd, the glow and rustle of girls; glamorous 
evenings and deep-sounding midnights. The deli- 
cate shade and shimmer of Green Park at eleven 
in the morning, the deep-lunged mid-day laughter of 
Charing Cross, the opulent lights of the Strand at 
dusk — in each of these is essence of London, free to 
all. 

Let us go out then, and mix with the harsh splen- 
dours of the day, and find peace on the suspended 
breath of midnight. William Monk and I will be 
leaders and you can march behind. 

Monk is a good man to know. He is the perfect 
town companion. He has the right London spirit. 
He is ready to go "tatts" at any time, anywhere. 
He doesn't ask what the occasion is, or where we 
are going now: He is content to go. Plan or 
programme he detests. Never need you ask him 
what he would like to do. He will exchange hats 
in Sloane Street or philosophise in Newington Butts. 
He will lunch you at Prince's or join you at a Good 
Pull Up for Carmen. He loves to idle in out-of- 
the-way corners, wherever his feet may carry him; 
holding, as all right-thinking people hold, that leisure 
is the true life, and that Britons never were made 
to be slaves of the vice of work. He is as happy 



IN THE THICK OF IT 13 

and playful In Old Ford as In Cambridge Circus; at 
PentonvIUe Road as at Charing Cross or The Mall. 
For him, "being out" among men is sufficient holi- 
day; he asks no dressing or added grace; and being 
out with him, though he is by many years my senior, 
is like being out with a wide-eyed nephew, avid of 
excitement. To all the common Incidents and specta- 
cles of the London day he brings an appetite. Shops 
and advertisement hoardings, queer characters and 
the amiable eccentricities of the plain man amuse and 
enchant him. His immediate radius is Illumined by 
large laughter, and his company floats like an island 
of felicity through the beating sea of the pre-occu- 
pied crowd. 

As a playfellow of the pavements he Is without 
blemish, if I except his enthusiasm for the novels of 
Edgar Saltus. (There I cannot meet him, for I have 
never read Edgar Saltus.) Often have he and I 
paced twenty streeted miles of London, moving here 
and there as the mood led us, caring not a monkey's 
caress where the hours found us or what the weather 
did to us, but, possessed by London, wandering, gos- 
siping, or holding rich silences. 

Such a day was yesterday. We did nothing worth 
remarking. We had, as they say, nothing to show 
for It, and I can make no claims for It. 

We left home at ten o'clock, the respectable hour, 
and proceeded leisurely to town. For these morn- 
ing hours the avenues of work best suit the mood. 



14» THE LONDON SPY 

for there is no more stimulating and gratulatory 
pastime than that of standing in that sterile region 
East of St. Paul's and West of Aldgate Pump, 
watching men with ten times our income moving 
actively hither and thither in zealous busy-ness. 
They rush or plod, with furrowed brow, pre-occu- 
pied, while we, whose joint incomes would barely 
pay the income-tax of one of them, may be excused 
some feeling of relish in indulging our fancy and 
turning this way or that, wherever a corner invites 
to a dog-fight, a horse down, or a Punch and Judy 
show. 

For we also were once of the City, junior clerks, 
and, had we stayed there, might now be like one 
of these, in a position of command, with a swollen 
salary and a circumscribed leisure, a cave-dweller, 
working and eating below the earth's surface. We 
might have followed the example of those well- 
groomed young clerks in the advertisement pictures, 
who take "courses" in business proficiency and mind 
training, and are summoned, six weeks after their 
first lesson, to the Board Room (chilly words!) 
and given the secretaryship of the company. We 
might now be bobbing in and out of the City every 
day like a bally shuttle — Surrey-City, City-Surrey, 
Surrey-City. As it is, we buy our bananas where 
we will, and choose the most ripe, far beyond the 
Surrey-City section; and while the good hard-work- 
ing citizens disappear into doorways and go upstairs 



IN THE THICK OF IT 15 

or below to their offices, and earn their country cot- 
tages and their motor-cars and cigars, we turn from 
Cheapside into Newgate Street, and so to Holborn 
and Kingsway and the Strand. 

Wet day or fine. Spring or Winter, in the candid 
sunlight or the pensive rain, the morning streets of 
London carry always full measure of pleasing as- 
pects. There is the crowd and there are shop- 
windows. There are Mr. Gamage's windows, with 
their marvellous riot of mechanical contraptions 
that draws you from the other side of the street. 
There is Leather Lane with Its cheap-Jack stalls. 
There is Staple Inn, offering moments of contempla- 
tion, and Mr. Glaisher's "remainder" bookshop. 
There is the great bald-faced boulevard of Kings- 
way. There is the full charactered music of the 
Strand; and minute by minute the sweet spell of 
sky and mist dressing crude buildings with grace, 
and the proud procession of traffic. 

Though I best love London in Autumn and 
mid-Winter, she wears her peculiar beauty In the 
Spring; and I find that season as generous to her 
as to the fields and lanes that await its coming for 
release from Winter's bondage. To each it lends 
fresh beauty. To the woods and lanes, while the 
first green is barely upon them, comes the swallow, 
marking the blank sky with wayward curves and 
angles. The hills show green and blue, with here 
and there a vivid acre of gold. About the lanes the 



16 THE LONDON SPY 

hawthorn leans, and the giant beeches transmute the 
light to their own unearthly beauty. Cottage doors 
are newly opened to the air, and the good gossips 
come out to the porches and talk of the prospect of 
the fruit crops. In every garden the boughs of 
cherry and pear are putting forth bright shoots 
against the flecked blue of the sky, and winged 
creatures are busy in their lazy way about the hedge- 
row. It Is the time of Germinal; and green, the 
colour of awakening, has conquered the brown of 
Winter-time decay. Deep in the woods primrose and 
anemone are chiming their blue and gold with the hue 
of last year's leaves, and about the paths at twilight 
one encounters youth, solitary or in couples. And 
while the lovers love, the solitaries muse on frag- 
ments of Herrick or Spenser or Campion, or snatches 
of Pervigilium Veneris, if they are so fortunate as 
to hold within their minds those fragile echoes of 
springtides past. On the upper reaches of the 
Thames the waters sparkle with a new brilliance. 
The houseboats are under the decorators, and In 
the high woods above the river the birds make 
separate music and communal colour. The golden- 
footed goddess is walking. The lusty pomp begins. 
Year by year this miracle is repeated, ye< still It 
moves all men to wonder and revival. They do 
not accept It as they accept Winter. They marvel 
anew, and, at the first bland breeze, would, If they 
were free, be off and away on the roads, not to 



IN THE THICK OF IT 17 

ride, but to tramp, to saunter, to make casual en- 
counters at roadside taverns and to make the night's 
resting-place where the night finds them. 

But for my own part I prefer to meet this miracle 
in London. I know not where the white road runs, 
and I'm beggared if I care. I like to let London, 
transmuted by the random touch of Spring, stir my 
blood with her new vistas and new aspects. For 
London, too, is sensible to this spirit of unrest, and 
turns in its winterly apparel, and listens. The 
Spring comes more slowly upon us, perhaps, than 
upon the countryside. We do not suddenly get the 
first smell of something new in the air, and follow 
Its delicate trail; but day by day I become aware 
of an Increasing mildness in the air and of a new 
spirit In the streets, and I begin to debate whether 
I shall leave my overcoat at home. 

And then one morning, my business or my whims 
take me through the squares or the parks, and 
look! — the trees are alight with buds and busy with 
birds; and something steals upon me and settles 
lightly within me, and I become silly and hungry for 
colour and song; and London feeds me there and 
then with a revelation of Springtide, and the very 
traffic is attuned to my vagrant mood. 

My eyes are opened. My heart sings Foi che 
sapete ... I note that the girls have packed 
away their furs and come out In frivolous window- 
curtains. I see that the painters and upholsterers 



18 THE LONDON SPY 

are busy in hotels and on shop-fronts; that Spring 
suitings are filling the tailors' shops, and that the 
early sunshine is conspiring with them by betraying 
the rubbed places of my Dennis Bradleys. Gardeners 
are busy in the parks and public gardens, bedding 
out (I think that's what they call it), and all the 
youth of England is on fire, plying the makers of 
athletic goods with copious orders. The 'bus con- 
ductor says assertively that we shall soon 'ave Easter 
'ere, and old ladies remark to each other, with naive 
surprise, how the evenings are drawing out, dear. In 
suburban railway-trains, dusty talk of hard times 
and political knavery is shelved, and bright hopes 
are expressed for "my early peas," my "Lady Gays," 
and "my crocuses." Sage advice is offered and taken 
on pruning, slugs, manure, and grass; and eyes shine 
with the old mild frenzy of the earth. Adam's hobby 
is the topic; seed catalogues are things that matter; 
relieved, if at all, by conjectures as to the achieve- 
ments of Kent, Surrey and Middlesex, on the cricket- 
field. 

Then I recognise that the Spring has been with 
us these two weeks, and I throw up my office-window, 
and the voice of London pours clearly upon my ear 
with the shock of remembered song. I have heard 
it through the Winter as a muffled throbbing, but 
now the muft is removed, and we are in close contact. 
I begin to distinguish its instrumentation — the buzz 
of the taxis, the hum of the 'buses, and the rumble 



IN THE THICK OF IT 19 

of horse-traffic, and 1 recognise that London has 
other birds than sparrows. Down with substantial 
curtains! Throw open doors to the soft morning! 
The truant has returned! 

The season has begun. Lord's and the Oval make 
signs and promises. The sharrabangs devise new 
routes and extend the old. Out come the tennis 
racquet and last year's flannels for anxious inspec- 
tion. The People of Importance (who have never 
been missed) advise the Morning Post of their re- 
turn from the Mediterranean. Taxi-drivers and 
'bus-drivers coquette with courtesy, under the in- 
fluence of water-colour skies and temperate air. 
Tops and skipping-ropes break out among the chil- 
dren; the Italianate ice-cream barrows appear, and 
the greengrocers' shops assume fresh complexions. 
English violets and primroses appear at the kerbside> 
and everywhere, in the poorest alley as in the noble 
thoroughfare, in Duckett Street, Stepney, as in Bond 
Street, there's a something about that sets the good 
folk chirping. 

Old Pugnutt, of Hoxton, is giving all spare hours 
to his three square yards of front and six square 
yards of back garden, fixing and transplanting, mak- 
ing his windows gay with newly-painted window-boxes 
and pots of flowering plants. They won't live. Hox- 
ton air will see to that, and Pugnutt knows it. Why, 
then, does he do it? Why make this forlorn enter- 
prise at beautifying Hoxton? Because it's Spring- 



20 THE LONDON SPY 

time; even his poor veins are filled with genial fire, 
and "something" makes him do it. Here, as in the 
country, doors are set open to the ardent air, and 
Mrs. Pugnutt goes into her "cleaning" not perfunc- 
torily, as in Winter, but with something of a passion; 
and as the rooms are cleaned, so something of dusti- 
ness falls from her heart. She and her neighbours 
no longer hurry past each other, their arms pinched- 
in under thin shawls, their noses eager for the 
kitchen fire. They dally at the corner, and under the 
candid eyes of their playmate the Spring, they smile 
kindly upon old enemies. 

"What a lovely day, to be sure, Mrs. Pugnutt?" 

"Ah, quite bucks you up to feel the sun, don't it? 
Things don't seem 'alf so bad in the Spring, do 
they?" 

So they renew their serviceable philosophy and 
their old wonder at the warmth and brightness of 
the sun, and debate in new terms the hardness of 
the times, and part cheerfully, whatever the occasion, 
thanking God that they've got a nice fine day for it. 

The day and the day's work go swiftly, and we 
no longer dash home by Tube, but try for the top 
of the 'bus; or, if we live not too far afield, we walk 
home with Angeline through the chill light of the 
evening. 

These Spring twilights have not the intimate warm 
serenity of the first Autumn twilights; rather, they 
are aloof, perturbing. Nature is in labour, and the 



IN THE THICK OF IT 21 

lyric light of the day is settled into something 
strained. Nowhere, I think, not even in a desert of 
snow, does one suffer the sense of desolation so acute- 
ly as on a March evening in a side-street, with a 
lone bird piping to the clouded sky. Life seems colder 
than a January dawn, sadder than that plain where 
Childe Roland journeyed. The pulse of things is 
then at its lowest beat, for it is the long moment of 
the earth's agony before the sudden rise, the new 
birth. Yet, though melancholy more profound than 
the melancholy of Autumn be about us, we are not 
dismayed: We know its meaning. We know- 
that in the morning we shall have flowers and kind 
air and frolic skies; and with Angeline we discuss 
field-path rambles and Saturday and Sunday walks 
round the more pastoral Home Counties. 

Under the smart sunshine every little lost corner 
awakes and chirps. Even the morose alleys of the 
City — Walbrook, Bucklersbury, Budge Row, Loth- 
bury — shed a little of their dinge and misanthropy, 
and seek harmony with humanity. The river, from 
Chelsea to Woolwich, throws back the fresh light 
in the morning, and never is it so lovely as on a 
night of Spring under the moon. In the Parks and 
on the Commons, from Finchley to Wimbledon, 
from Barking to Ealing, youth is "out to play," and 
they go to their games like prisoners from cells. 
A vast increment of energy surges through the city 
and through its people. Everywhere something is 



22 THE LONDON SPY 

doing. The Spring has got into them. Our laugh- 
ing Lady Greensleeves has kissed them. 

It soon dies down, this sudden burst, and by June, 
when the hot days begin, there is a perceptible 
languor in the streets, and men talk of their holidays. 
But while it lasts it is magnificent. It is a city 
in full holiday. We are all appetites, and the Spring 
gives zest to all our doings. We let business stay, 
and we drink with gusto, not to quench thirst or to 
warm or to cool ourselves, but for joy of the Spring. 
We sing old songs, and we make new songs, and 
London joins in the chorus. Even a 'bus-ride be- 
comes a holiday event — not organised and decked 
with White City flam-jams, but an impromptu carni- 
val of Spring Worship, deep, rich, fluent and com- 
pelling. The fountains in Trafalgar Square seem 
charged with effei-v^escence, and break the morning 
light into a million drops of sunshine. We no longer 
go about our business with set faces. We are awake. 
We look about us and upward. After long crouch- 
ing over Winter fires, we straighten our shoulders 
gladly. We begin to dawdle and the windows of 
Mr. Thomas Cook and the railway oflfices are set 
out with allurements that give excuse for dawdling. 

The pale ofl!ice-boy ("Sydney's holidays are in Sep- 
tember" — Miss Vesta Tilley) looks longingly upon 
them, and lags in his errand; September is half a 
year away, and already he feels the pull. For him 
and for me, the exhortation "Spend Easter in the 



IN THE THICK OF IT 23 

Tyrol" is but a gibe, an aggravation of our vernal 
unrest. The best that we shall achieve will be a 
Bank Holiday at Southend or the South Coast; but 
I warrant that even that brief pilgrimage will ren- 
der him and me a measure of travel-ecstasy denied 
to those whose circumstances make them always free 
of Homburg, Norway or the Rhine. We shall carry 
the Spring under our waistcoats. 

But if I cannot go to the clime where the Spring 
is born, there are many little corners of London 
where I can touch hands with it. In the Winter, I 
am for the dark warmth of the Slavonic Quarters — 
Aldgate, Stepney, Spitalfields, St. Luke's — where 
Winter has a native cousinship; but in the Spring 
I am called to the nonchalant skies of our Latin 
Quarters — Soho, Charlotte Street, and Clerkenwell. 
It is to Clerkenwell and its lazy laughter that I 
am first called at the earliest taste of soft weather, 
and thither I make pilgrimage to greet old friends. 
I lounge down Eyre Street Hill, catching an aro- 
matic whiff from the hot bright byways of Genoa, 
and humming UAddio a Napoli; and at my keyless 
humming out swings, from his store, Vincento or 
Alessandro, and I am bidden enter, and a cork is 
drawn and we drink a brisk bottle to La Primavera. 
And Alessandro takes down his guitar and sings some 
lucid melody of old Naples. 

After an hour in Italy, I take an hour in France, 
in Frith Street, and take my lunch in Charlotte Street, 



^4 THE LONDON SPY 

with Its Austrian-Swiss atmosphere, Its little white 
cafes and coffee-bars, and Its flasks of rude but jocund 
ChlantI, which Is very Spring — sharp, rough, but 
tinct with sunshine. The season demands these 
things. Steaks from the grill, cuts from the joint, 
and tankards of beers are an offence to the occasion; 
the coming of Spring presumes more gracious ob- 
servance. One must greet the visitor with the cus- 
toms of the visitor's country, with a little bunch 
of violets for courtesy, and wine for celebration, 
and songs under the moon of April. 

Strangely moving are those Spring moonlights In 
the city. During the day, the Spring Is In your blood. 
It Is expressive; visible and vocal. But under the 
young moon It creeps to your soul and makes sanc- 
tuary there, and cleanses you and blesses you. The 
moon of Winter has Its austerity, the moon of 
Autumn Its majesty, the moon of Summer Its glory; 
but this moon of the child-season — one Is hushed and 
humbled before It as before young virginity. In 
field or on hlU-top, In street or alley or square, the 
moon of Spring makes the night mad with secret 
raptures. You may stand In PImlIco under that 
moonlight, and be shaken out of yourself, and come 
chastened from Its delicate hauntlngs. You may get 
an echo of Its mysteries In Cheapslde, and draw 
refreshment from It on the Embankment. 

For Spring Is the true beginning of the New Year. 
Then, not in January, do we, old and young, look 



IN THE THICK OF IT 25 

back and forward, and remember and resolve. It 
Is then that we desire to go apart and seek self- 
communion, for this season of the purification of 
Nature is the season of the purification of man, the 
season of avowal and renewal. 

"Now love ye to-night who loved never, now ye 
who have loved, love anew!" 

But I indulge too much my habit of wandering. 
Where were we? 

Oh, yes, in Kingsway, going towards the Strand. 
In the Strand, we had an encounter. Monk and I; 
one that indicated a morning draught. We took it 
at Rule's, a place that has blossomed into a "second 
period," and become a "place," where the merry 
old actors meet under the guaidianship of Mr. Tom 
Bell. They are the last of the old guard, for the 
younger school of actors wears now the respectabil- 
ity of Golder's Green. The ambitious young don't 
lounge. They are not to be seen in crowded places. 
They live the quiet life of the bank manager or the 
merchant. 

But in Rule's, the old style is met at mid-day, 
or after the show; comedians erect, with bent elbow 
and back-thrown head, tragedians leaning on the bar. 
Each harks back to the speech of an earlier time, 
and my-dear-old-boy's the new comer, apparently 
overjoyed at meeting again. Each persistently begs 
the other to have it with him; "It's rny turn, dear old 



26 THE LONDON SPY 

thing!" And always they act; always they talk to 
their neighbour as though he were at the back of the 
house, articulating each syllable and opening each 
sentence with "Dear — old — chap — let — me — tell — 
you — this. . ." so that one fears to listen lest some 
secret of high import, better unspoken, be about to 
leave their lips. 

They have cascades of talk, but no conversation. 
Before one man can finish a sentence, the other is 
off on a new theme. While one is in the middle of 
a funny story, you may see the other's lips twitch- 
ing to tell a better one. Always they complain about 
the times, and always they are friendly to all comers. 
The star drinks with the chorus gentleman, the be- 
ginner with the bill-topper; and each congratulates 
the other on his work, dear old boy ! And truly they 
are dear old boys. I have heard Stock Exchange 
men and others in the city use the term, but there it 
is false in spirit and application; a mere skeleton 
without flesh or soul. But these are a happy band 
of brothers, who make of Rule's a large-spirited and 
democratic club. 

When Mrs. O'Brien (Carrie Julian) left its doors 
it fell away and ceased to be known as a "place;" 
but after its decline In the war-years, it has picked 
up; and now, while it Is not a place to which a man 
should (or would) take his wife, it Is what a bar 
ought to be — a place where men are honestly them- 



IN THE THICK OF IT 27 

selves in their raw and natural state, free from the 
imposed niceties of speech and intercourse. 

I know no reason why women should not take a 
glass of wine in a bar, as they take their coffee 
after shopping, and they should have their own bars. 
The mixed bar is an anomaly and neither men nor 
women are comfortable in them. There should be 
dainty taverns, owned and conducted by women for 
women. As the man, lonely and seeking company, 
may, in any part of London, find conversation over 
a drink, and sometimes meet quaint or brilliant char- 
acter, so should the lonely woman be able to freshen 
her mind with talk with other women. There is no 
conversation so racy as that held with strangers on 
the common ground of a tavern. It is always 
amusing and often surprising; and those who 
love to explore other minds, and discover curious 
points of view, may have excellent and rich talks 
with unknowns in bars. The clerk, the shop-keeper, 
the taxi-driver, the merchant, will illuminate for you 
positions and attitudes and forms of conduct that 
may long have been mysteries to you, dark spots 
in the inwardness of the Englishman. 

And I have never understood why women should 
not be, among themselves, free of this casual inter- 
course and acquaintanceship. Many of my personal 
friends were first acquaintances met in these public 
places, which offer illimitable fields of human com- 
panionship; and acquaintance grew, from occasional 



28 THE LONDON SPY 

meetings and talks, into close knowledge and under- 
standing and friendship. Too often our friends grow 
upon us and with us from school and business and 
family; we have not each sought the other out. But 
with these friends of mine, we met, surveyed, and, as 
the phrase goes, "took to each other." Outside the 
tavern we would never have met, as our interests 
were worlds apart; and we would have missed much 
goodly communion. How the lonely woman ever 
finds friends or acquaintances, I know not. Every- 
body feels that somewhere exists the ideal friend, but 
if you are limited to your home circle or your office 
set, how to find the friend? Well, I have found mine 
by ranging hither and thither, and picking and choos- 
ing sympathetic spirits, and I would like to see the 
lonely woman free to enjoy similar opportunities. 
The tea-shop affords no such opportunity. You dare 
not speak to your neighbour in those places; if you 
do, you are met at once with a suspicious eye and a 
grunt or a monosyllable. You are checkmated at 
first move. 

That attitude is frowned upon at Rule's and all 
such good places. When we entered we were at 
once recognised by a man, who drew us into a goodly 
circle of four. The bar was crowded with choice 
fellows and merry comedians, who, by grace of tav- 
ern atmosphere, are much funnier there than they 
are allowed to be on the London stage. Unhappily, 
much of that fun may not be transferred to the 



IN THE THICK OF IT 29 

printed page. There were stories . . . and 
stories. 

We gathered half a dozen of the best; then moved 
westward from the gasconade of Maiden Lane to 
the sparkle of the Square, and lunched at the Ivy, 
where are perfect cooking and that excelling service 
that conceals itself. I am often asked by young 
country friends which is the best restaurant in Lon- 
don, and I can never answer them. There is no best 
restaurant in London, and there is no best church 
in London. In so intimate a matter as religion or 
food there can be no standard of perfection. Each 
man has his own best. My choice is always the Ivy, 
opposite the Ambassador's Theatre. There you 
have elegant appointments, a masterly chef, and a 
noble cellar. 

I have no interest in the Ivy, and I am not getting 
paid for this. Far from it. Even when I can afford 
to lunch or dine there (and I seldom can) I miss the 
welcome that was mine when It was In Its beginning 
days. Only the very regular or the very expensive 
customer gets that now. Instead of being ushered 
to the old corner-table on the ground flour, by the 
window, I am sent upstairs. You see, the Ivy is 
now successful and famous, and I do It no credit. 
When It first opened, under the original ownership, 
it was only one room with a bare floor and a few 
rough mural decorations, and you could dine there 
for two shillings. Now it has acquired the whole 



30 THE LONDON SPY 

corner-block, and wears oak panelling, thick carpets, 
and shaded lights for each table. Formerly It was 
the haunt of hard-up gentlemen of the theatre; now 
It Is crowded with plutocratic "stars" and the smart 
people who affect that company. In Its new and 
elaborate raiment. It looks with slightly raised eye- 
brows at my three-year-old suit. I don't fit. Still, 
when I am asked out to lunch and asked to name 
my restaurant, I always name the Ivy. 

We lingered over coffee and watched the new ar- 
rivals. A pleasant pastime, this. Taking meals out 
Is not yet an Instinctive habit with the English. Popu- 
lar In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it 
fell Into disuse In the nineteenth, and it is still much 
of a function. Manners and manner for the restau- 
rant and the home differ sharply. The Englishman 
does not walk into a restaurant as into his own dln- 
ingroom. He "enters" as to a stage. It is a self-con- 
scious parade, and natural grace becomes deliberate 
gracefulness. The Englishman — bless him for it — • 
always blinks at the limelight. He Is conscious of 
making one at a public occasion. He looks about him 
with a cold glassy stare. Seldom does he appear at 
home. He seems to miss the conveniences of his own 
table, and Its ever-present attendance; and the covert 
eye-shots at the waiter, who Is always somewhere 
else, weary him. 

After coffee we again wandered. We thought of 
a matinee, and thought better of It. There was no 



IN THE THICK OF IT 31 

concert that attracted us, so we parted for awhile — 
Monk to do a little work, I to the august quiet of 
the London Library. A wonderful institution, the 
London Library; and it and St. James' Square are 
in happy accord; their moods blend. It gives me the 
use of the second-best library in London, and the 
very best reading and v/riting room; It permits me 
to borrow ten volumes at a time and keep them for 
three months if I wish; and all for a yearly charge 
of — three guineas. There Is no other library In Eng- 
land that affords such facilities to Its subscribers at 
so low a rate. One salutes Carlyle, its founder, 
every time one enters Its doors. 

We met again later, In those suave hours be- 
tween tea and dinner when London is tuning-up 
for the evening surge of song, and the feminine twi- 
light gleams in primrose and grey, and the piquant 
odour of tea and toast pours from the tea-shops 
with compelling advertisement of the delights of five 
o'clock. Full of wonder were the streets, cluttered 
with the going-home crowd, lit by lamp and shop, 
magical with movement, and calling us with deluding 
distances and starry miles. The shops were open, 
and their treasures lay before us, newly guised by 
the lustre of concealed lamps. Regent Street glowed 
flamboyantly against the night, each of its butter- 
fly shops a jazz of colour, a vers lihre of publicity; 
while Piccadilly Circus was a transformation "set," 
a riot of colour and dazzle and blaze. 



32 THE LONDON SPY 

This bravura would not suit all parts of London. 
There are women who are decorated by jewels, and 
women who beautify the jewels, and women who do 
neither. They sit well upon Piccadilly Circus, lend- 
ing beauty and receiving dignity, but the homely 
beauty of the East End Is not of the kind that is 
emphasised by the lustre of gems. The hushed semi- 
tones of dim streets, of silken twilights Interrupted 
by suave lamplight — these require no bedlzenment. 
But to Piccadilly Circus the jewels belong, and she 
wears them splendidly. I pass through it every 
night, yet never can I pass without an applauding 
thrill and that catch of the breath which marks our 
recognition of good dramatic work. 

Away they go — these movies in light : motor- 
cars in motion, liquor flowing from bottles, flags fly- 
ing and messages calling to you across the face of the 
night to Eat This or Drink That or Keep That 
Schoolgirl Complexion. Blue and green and red 
and yellow and amber, flowing and flashing, they 
spell their foolish fables Into the night and Into my 
eye and brain, and vex and dazzle and delight me. 
Your Londoner is always a child, loving "sights" 
and spectacles, and our advertising experts have 
gauged him well, in this matter. It behoves Mr. 
Brock, of the Crystal Palace, to look to it. Every 
night we have six or seven displays, each of which 
is as exciting as the fireworks; and none of them to 
the benefit of Mr. Brock. Piccadilly Circus has the 



IN THE THICK OF IT 33 

best show, but that at Leicester Square runs It close; 
while Cambridge Circus, the Embankment and Ox- 
ford Street all array themselves in an evening dress 
of spangle and gem that brings them into competi- 
tion with Broadway at night. I hope Broadway 
knows about it, and is pulling up its socks. 

Around Soho we wandered, meeting friends re- 
leased from toil, and calling here and calling there. 
A chat and a stroll and a drink and a stroll; and our 
party became four, and we took a tray and a tankard 
at Snow's, the cheapest decent dining-place in the 
West End. 

All types and characters dine at Snow's — rising 
actors, rising or decaying journalists, taxi-drivers, 
ladies of the chorus, clerks, film workers, wanderers 
like ourselves, and those nondescript solitaries, who 
are too shabby and diflident to be anybody, and too 
distinguished of brow to be nobody. Snow's is ar- 
ranged on the old pew system, and there are no 
table cloths. Your dishes, your bread and your drink 
are brought to you on your own little tray, and for 
something less than two shillings you may feed 
splendidly there on plain English food, in a pleasant 
homely atmosphere, and may read all the papers. A 
good place to know. Now that "The Sceptre," with 
its age-long tradition, is closed. Snow's and Stone's 
are the only chop-houses left in the West; and of 
the two I prefer Snow's. The company is more 
Interesting and diversified and less prosperous than 



34 THE LONDON SPY 

the company of Stone's, which is mainly lawyers and 
Civil Servants. 

It occurs to me that there is a fresh field for the 
restaurateur in London. In odd corners of London 
you will find restaurants for all nations — French, 
Swiss, Italian, German, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, 
Japanese, Hungarian, Russian, American, Serbian, 
Norwegian, Armenian, Albanian, Czecho-Slovakian, 
and Welsh. But — there are no restaurants for the 
provincials. Why not? I am sure that the visitor 
from the remote shires, bewildered by the choice 
of restaurants, or weary of cosmopolitan cuisine, 
would turn with delight to a cafe where he might 
get the food of his country and hear the accent of 
his lanes. There should be a Yorkshire restaurant, 
a Lancashire restaurant, a Devonshire restaurant, 
a Cornish restaurant, a Norfolk restaurant, offering 
pasties, junkets, pies, hot-pots, Bakewell puddings, 
dumplings. Not only would they attract their wan- 
derers and the "Society of So-and-so Men in Lon- 
don" but the curious Londoner, who is always 
searching for new table thrills, would gladly renew 
acquaintance with dishes tasted on rare holidays. 
I'm sure there's money In It, and I present the Idea 
to any enterprising woman anxious to start in 
business. 

To the streets again. A theatre? A music-hall? 
The Hoiborn, the Euston? Not to-night. The thea- 
tre is a pleasant refuge, but we were In the mood for 



IN THE THICK OF IT 35 

less formal entertainment; and I knew that about 
the streets we would find bands and organs and cof- 
fee bars and other bars, and immediately outside 
the theatres good fun for which there is no charge. 
Walking up Shaftesbury Avenue, we were enter- 
tained by contortionists, the gentleman with soup 
spoons who makes merry music with them against 
his poor knees and elbows, itinerant gramophones, 
vocalists, elocutionists, real kilted Scots with bag- 
pipes (from Aldgate) and small boys with their 
attempted songs and their abrupt breakdown at the 
warning cry of "Caw-pur!" Why go inside? More 
healthy and more refreshing to eat your banana 
or your toffee-apple down our alley. 

So we strolled East and West, and London soaked 
into us and enriched us, and brought us out in full 
flower of amiable and peculiar talk. We ranged 
the philosophies, and remembered good stories, %nd 
told better ones, and Monk with buxom face and 
twinkling eye, quoted Edgar Saltus, and we walked 
to the fluent pace of the night. 

We cov^ered many miles. Starting from Piccadilly 
Circus we challenged the mysteries of Barnsbury and 
Canonbury, and finished late in "The London Ap- 
prentice" at Hoxton, striking in our path beautiful 
episodes and curious drama in those shy quarters 
that are so generous with impressions to the ama- 
teur. Not in the great roads of London, its hotels 
or big houses, do you come upon these nocturnes. 



36 THE LONDON SPY 

These show the things of the moment, the spirit of 
the times, the vexations and dismays, the patching 
and changing and shifting. The enduring things, 
the steady, soft-moving life of London, are in the 
background. Down the side-streets — that's where 
joy lies. That's where you must seek her; in small 
taverns, in the movie-houses, in the recreation 
grounds, in the little local clubs, among the clerks, 
shop-assistants, labourers, charwomen — anybody, in 
short, who works hard for a scanty wage, and takes 
fun, when it comes, with both hands, voraciously 
and gleefully. 

Beauty and sweet temper live in these side-streets, 
with their ardent dark and meagre light, their 
flowing murmur of voices. Through their half- 
open doors or unshaded windows the passer catches 
sudden vignettes of tea-table and fire and strange 
figures. We see them as figures of another world, 
idly busy upon their various occasions, reading, 
sewing, eating, lounging, posed in their harmoni- 
ous setting as exquisitely as in the frozen moment 
of statuary. I have known these byways from 
earliest childhood, and I hold them closer than 
any of the grander beauties of the town. I think 
with peculiar affection of certain side-streets in 
Islington, Bermondsey, Paddington and Canning 
Town, and the glamorous interiors that have held me 
with the shock of sudden poetry; and there's a street 
in Stepney that I have named The Street of BeautI- 



IN THE THICK OF IT 37 

ful Children. But of that I will tell you in another 
chapter. Through and through these streets we 
went noctambulating, presented at every turn with 
warn nooks, robust highways, or heartless spaces that 
filled the night with inuendoes of dread or romance; 
and stumbling here and there upon the midnight 
lovers. 

Don't we all know them — those midnight lovers? 
Haven't we all, at sudden corners, blundered upon 
them? Nay, we who have been boy or girl, have we 
not all, at some time or other, made one with that 
scattered crowd of the late hours that stands in the 
sweet security of two in dark doorways and discreet 
alleys where the lamplight does not gloat; saying 
good-night until to-morrow? In the larger hours of 
the city's night, in all such retreats, you will come 
upon this still, rapt, wordless sacrament of first love : 
the flutter of a white frock against the railings, boy 
and girl in shadow, heart to heart, careless of all but 
their own ecstasy. 

For the streets of London are, for the poorer 
young people, what the drawing-room, the dance, 
the conservatory, the quiet garden, and the taxi are 
for those in happier circumstances. Only in the 
misty lost corners of the thickening streets can they 
attain the solitude they seek. For them there is no 
elsewhere. Monitorial Councils drive them out of 
the parks at just that hour when a seat under unsus- 
picious trees is most desirable; and the front parlour 



38 THE LONDON SPY 

at home Is too public, too fraught with Interruptions 
and restriction, even if It were available. Often it 
is not; for working-class parents, like Councils, have 
"views" — very strict "views" — about boy-and-girl 
love. In many homes the daughter dare not ac- 
knowledge a sweetheart to the family until she be 
turned eighteen. But love does not wait upon these 
arbitrary distinctions : It awakens when It will. You 
may forbid and forbid, and lecture and admonish, 
but before Dolly is out of the school playground 
she has her boy; and this way or that they will meet; 
and the naughty girl will stay out late, even If she 
does suffer the indignity of chastisement from father. 
Really, there should be some sort of continuation 
classes for parents to help them to remember what 
they so quickly forget when they become parents — 
their own youth. 

For the young lover then, paradoxically, the street 
is more private than the home. Even when the front 
parlour is conceded, the sense of complete privacy Is 
lacking; the neighbourhood of the family is too im- 
minent. But the stars, the dumb walls, the pave- 
ments, and the rumour of near traffic and crowd, 
enclose them In greater security than any parlour 
can afford; and In the hesitant dusk of July, the keen 
glitter of Winter or the rain-streaked Autumn nights, 
through the procession of seasons and weathers, 
they snatch their hour of solitude, posed in uncon- 
scious beauty. During the evening they walk here 



IN THE THICK OF IT 39 

and there about the less hurried streets or sit in the 
more sequestered seats at the picture-palace; but in 
the hour of parting their feet are still; and in crepus- 
cular corners, wherever the friendly shadows are as- 
sembled, in the quiet spots of Westminster and the 
Alleys of Shoreditch, they impede your passage, lost 
in silent wonder of each other's magnificence, forget- 
ful of the stress of the great chords of the day under 
the grateful movements of the night. But they are 
not abashed by your intrusion. It is you who hurry by 
with averted head, though your embarrassment is 
idle; for between your v/orld and theirs float the 
clouds of their adolescent rapture. They have not 
seen you or even heard your step. Nor would they 
care if they had. In their exquisite moment, with 
pulses thrilling each to each, what are you and your 
pedestrian occasions to them? You cannot dismay 
them or lend them any increase of bliss; but, if your 
heart be not wholly wrapped in mundane things, they 
can lend you at least an echo of their own de- 
light. 

To me, these lovers are one of the chief beauties 
of London's night. To be abroad, between eleven 
o'clock and midnight, in the great highways, and to 
know that down every little side-street, stretching 
right and left of you, boys and girls, at gates and 
doorways, are making their long good-nights, Is to 
suffer as sweet a thrill as that which possesses them- 
selves. 



40 THE LONDON SPY 

This open-secret, byway love-making is, perhaps, 
an affair peculiarly English. On the Continent, 
where love-making is more free, more public, and 
celebrated in groups, the close colloquies of the back- 
streets are infrequent; but here, in the big cities, and 
particularly in London, where young love is pryed 
upon, and dogged and derided and hounded by 
authority; in the country, too, by field-gates and 
stiles, young England lingers and lounges in crystal- 
lised solitude, setting its happiness like pearls against 
the shell of forbiddance. For them, each night is a 
separate and single casket, loaded with the unprofit- 
able gold of romance. Life's confines are broken 
down; the world widens; the stars thicken; witchery 
Is abroad. Then they live those rich moments that 
come at times to all of us; moments when, by some 
fortuitous agreement of place and time, some happy 
harmony of sky, air, place, and time, the accustomed 
things are translated to the plane of dream and be- 
come as a stage set for fantastic adventure. They 
are the moments when the v/ings of Ariel brush our 
sorry lives, and the world wakens into vivid breath. 
Magic hangs on every step and for that brief while, 
anything may happen; all things are possible. We 
have all known such moments and hours; they come 
when they will, often in incongruous situations; but 
to young love they come at every meeting. 

For many lovers her gate or her doorway is a 
spot of danger, and they must make their partings 



IN THE THICK OF IT 41 

In more distant nooks. Wherever there Is a square 
or alley or remote corner, they discover It, and make 
It the scene of their last caresses; and most couples 
have a special corner of their own. It may be where 
they first met, or where they first kissed or had their 
first long talk. That corner, for them, becomes 
consecrated. It Is no common street or square or 
passage; no matter of brick and stone and paving, 
to be trodden carelessly as they tread other parts of 
the city; but a little street of love's own fashioning 
dropped Into London, touched with fantasy, coloured 
with dream, and very dear. Even when young love 
does not come to harvest; when one or other goes 
gaily after fresh faces, never again Is the forsaken 
one able to pass that corner or that alley with level 
pulse or unconsidering eye. 

And every street In London is, for somebody, such 
a consecrated spot. In every district which holds 
sheltered inlets, pools of quiet untroubled by the tide 
of traffic and the confusion of men, the youth of the 
city has built a bower of memory. These spots you 
may locate in the morning. Clues are left for the 
observant, and the chief clue is — hairpins. On this 
evidence I judge the Mall to be the favourite spot 
for dalliance, for often, In a morning walk from the 
Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace, I have count- 
ed, under the trees, over a hundred hairpins, not 
to mention some half-dozen scraps of ribbon; relics 
of the abandon of the night. 



42 THE LONDON SPY 

While this festival of good-nights moves through 
the whole year, it is more observed in the Winter 
months. This is not, as you might thinlc, because 
the light evenings withhold the wistful quiet and 
dusk that love demands, but because, as I think, the 
Winter is love's true season. That is not truly 
said — tha^ in the Spring a young man's fancy lightly 
turns to thoughts of love. So far as town life is con- 
cerned, it is a fallacy. The Spring is the very season 
when the thoughts of your urban youth are fixed 
otherwhere. He is concerned with sterner matters. 
He is called by cricket and tennis, by swimming, by 
running, and other Olympian business. His mind Is 
ever occupied, by work during the day, and by games 
during the evening. He can't be bothered with love. 
But in the Winter. 

Then, time hangs heavily. He is at a loose end, 
and his fancy, seeking employment, does then turn 
for distraction to the empire of girls. In the glamour 
of the street lights, or in the inviting flicker of fire- 
light, he bursts into recognition of Daisy's nice eyes 
or the jolly curls of Joan, or the wonderful smile of 
the tea-shop waitress. Winter inspires an appetite 
for warmth and intimacy. We feel a need for im- 
mediate social contract. In the Summer we are 
separate and scattered; we wish to escape direct 
neighbourhood, and loneliness has Its charms. But 
the Winter calls us in to the camp fires. It is a season 
of drawing together, of communion, a throw-back to 



IN THE THICK OF IT 43 

the cave days, when men gathered together for mu- 
tual protection through the long darkness. 

In this season, from October to March, the lads 
and lassies seek each other; and in the squares of 
Bloomsbury, the narrow streets of Soho, in tenement 
doorways of Spitalfields, and Stepney, in the courts 
and passages of Shadwell and Wapping, in the sunk- 
en, broken streets about Bankside, in the swimming 
light of the Embankment or the luminous dark of 
the Mall, the couples spend their midnight minutes 
under the indifferent stars. Pass through any square 
of Bloomsbury or any of the little squares 
and alleys of the East at that hour, and In the hush 
that enfolds these retreats, so that they might be 
hamlets of a rural valley, you will be conscious of 
company. And though you see nobody, your ears 
receive fragile murmurs, and sweet-ringing laughter 
troubles each shadowy corner. Somewhere beyond — 
it may be miles — lies the city. Notes of its travail 
come to you. Melancholy motor-horns hoot across 
the slumbering houses. Wheels rumble. Your ears 
gather the desslcated noises of the night — the lazy 
hum of many active voices. But here, by the railings, 
or In the quadrangle of the tenement, or down that 
court, here Is rich quiet, made richer by whisperings 
or by that living silence of young lips communing 
without speech. 

It is a consecration of the night, which none but 
devils would profane. Unhappily, there are many 



44 THE LONDON SPY 

devils who delight in this blasphemy; female devils 
in uniform, who make a quest of interrupting this 
sacrament, and dropping damp paws upon the pleas- 
ant heart of love, and whispering suggestions of 
obscenity into innocent ears. The policewoman, as 
well as the young lover, has discovered the shy 
corner, and hovers about it on silent feet, seeking 
dirt where none is, and finding it; warning decent 
girls against their decent lovers, and poisoning early 
affection with physical revelations. Surely so sweet 
a thing as this, that illumines the squalors of our 
streets with beauty, should be regarded only with 
grace and understanding; not through the red-flannel 
murk of the policewoman's mind? But they 
will not hear it. They greet the unseen with 
a sneer. They are deaf to song and blind to the 
Spring; and for love they have nothing but a formula 
of the consulting-room. 

But sometimes they go beyond themselves, and 
do more than they mean to do. Take the case of the 
officious policewoman, who, at midnight, descried 
two figures on a public seat in a quiet side-road. 
They sat together, with arms enlaced, lip to lip. 
To them, heavily, the policewoman; "Look here, 
don't you think it's time you two were in bed?" 

Well, let the epicene policewoman pad and prowl, 
and indulge to the full her lust of Interferingness; 
glory and loveliness have not yet passed away, nor 
will they at the bidding of such creatures. To-night 



IN THE THICK OF IT 45 

and every night, youth will love and laugh. Law and 
order may control the fools ; they will never control 
the fairies. 

And now the coffee-stalls began to rumble from 
obscure hospices, and the cheerful glow of that 
which pitches beneath Shoreditch Church attracted us 
and drew from all corners our fellows, wanderers and 
borrowers from the night. Within the narrow arc 
of Its light gathered workers, Idlers, vagrants, and 
the down-and-out, elbow to elbow, saucer to saucer, 
In a grand but transient democracy; all silent or 
exchanging only mumbles^ I know not why the 
coffee-stall crowd Is always silent, why the movement 
is so slow; the unaccustomed open-air and the vast 
night, I suppose, thwart any attempt at the trivial 
and the chatty. The same crowd in a bar or a 
coffee-shop would talk; but always at the stall I 
have found the customers glum and reticent, mum- 
bling only of necessity; crushed, as I say, by the 
solemnity of the hour. 

But there is one coffee-stall which is a spectacle, 
and about which are swift movement and clatter 
and babble. This is the firemen's coffee-stall, which 
is brought out on the occasion of a big fire, when 
the men have to work hours at a stretch without 
respite. On the arrival of the official stall they drop 
out by ones or twos and grab a little nourishment, 
and then back to the hose to relieve others. No 



46 THE LONDON SPY 

lounging or mumbling here, but brisk business all the 
time, with bobbing helmets, quick elbows, soiled uni- 
forms, sweat, and wet smoky faces. 

The coffee that the stalls provide is hot, but one 
cannot say much more for it. It is scarcely a food 
or a stimulant, and when we had finished our mug, 
I bethought me of a snug interior, and I heard the 
sizzle of eggs and bacon, and the clamour of com- 
plaining voices; and I spoke my thought to Monk. 
I had thought of an all-night buffet near King's 
Cross, and we retired from the spot-light of the stall 
and took 'bus to the most agreeable of all suppers — 
supper in an outdoor buffet. 

There Is a zest to this meal that Is absent from 
others. It is as thrilling as those midnight feasts 
on the floor of the dormitory in other times. There 
you are, seated In a little shed In the middle of the 
road, girdled by the Immense night ; In It, yet enclosed 
from Its surge. Outside, the cars hoot and voices 
wander. Inside, the bacon hisses In the pan. Out- 
side, cold and dark. Inside, light and warmth and 
teasing odours, growling voices, comminations, and 
tales of adventure. Never do eggs-and-bacon eat so 
well as at this hour and In these surroundings. Foods, 
like people, have their peculiar and proper setting 
when they are at their best. Pomme f rites at the 
Carlton are not half so delicious as a paper-full of 
"chips" eaten under the moonlight. (Note for Wal- 
ter Catlett — do you remember the "chips" and ham 



IN THE THICK OF IT 47 

sandwiches which we ate at two-o'clock In the 
morning, sitting on a railing In Stratford Broad- 
way?) 

While Fred "did" our bacon, we sat among the 
chauffeurs, and their n-yah, n-yah, n-yahing at the 
world and the times, and felt like Daniels, For we 
had been guilty of those very offences upon which 
they were now growling anathema. 

"Urr-quarter to twelve and wonnid me to go to 
Wimbledon. 'What's It worth?' I says." 

"An' woddldVsay?" 

"Said 'e'd see abaht it." 

"See abaht it." 

"Ur." 

"And woddid you do?" 

"Told 'im where 'e could put 'Is fare, and left 
'im standing." 

"Bloody well think so, too." And again: 

" 'And there's tuppence for yesself,' she says. 
Tuppence ! on a seven-shilling fare." 

"Wod yeh say to that?" 

"I didn't say much. But I just give 'er one look 
what she won't fergit in a 'urry, an' told 'er to put 
it in the kids' moneybox." 

"You was too easy. They want 'andling, them 
sort." 

"Ah, but y'never know — with a woman. 'Special- 
ly that kind, what knows regulations and all." 

"Urr— the bitches!" 



48 THE LONDON SPY 

The bacon Is done, and Fred serves It. Fred Is 
a real dab at two and a rasher, but he mustn't be 
tested beyond that. Still, what more do you want? 
All artists have their limitations; versatility is only 
for the mediocre. And In two and a rasher Fred 
expresses himself. He has a view of life tempered 
by his Immediate environment of heavy odours and 
hot air and rough language and bustle. 

"What you want In this life, y'know, me boy, 
is to keep yer 'ead. That's all. Just keep yer 'ead, 
and you'll get on. Let the others do the grousing — 
that's the secret. Look at me — ain't I got enough 
sometimes to send a fellow batty. But look at me. 
/ never worry." Plop goes an egg to the floor. 
"That's the second to-day — but what's the good of 
getting fussed up? Take life easy — that's my mot- 
ter. 'Ere — your doings is ready — give us up yer 
plates." Smack goes another rasher, pink and white 
and crisp and curly. 

"But wouldn't a little method make all the differ- 
ence?" I asked him. 

"Method? Coo, I ain't got no time for Method. 
Arst the boys 'ere what this place'd be like If I 
run It on Method. Keep yer 'ead and carry on — 
that's the way to get the work done." 

For austerity and precision, as for Method, Fred 
has no time. For him life means fullness, amplitude, 
ready companionship, and standing the racket, a 
sort of fine bright formlessness; In short, two and 



IN THE THICK OF IT 49 

a rasher. To see him with a frying-pan in each 
hand, and two separate and intricate conversations 
engaging his spare attention is to see a pretty piece 
of work. I have never seen a woman-cook handle 
a frying-pan with such facility. 

And now the boys — though the term hardly 
fits your taxi-man — began to crowd in and clamour; 
so, warmed and fed, I telephoned for Parker, and 
Parker arrived and took us at his best racing speed 
to our beds. 

There is quite delight in motoring through Lon- 
don at midnight. One seems to flow through the 
untroubled streets, filled with pale phantom lines of 
lamps, and only the humming of the engine to dis- 
turb — no, soothe, the large tranquillity of the city. 
The cool wind beats upon your face, and the stars 
and the clouds, in the subdued light, discover them- 
selves. The streets of toil stand shuttered and 
dumb: the roads lie clear before you; you may 
speed or crawl as you will. The city sleeps. You 
ride alone under the night, amid present enterprise 
and monuments of the enterprise of years; alone, 
but with a pleasant sense of the neighbourhood of 
Parker. 

Who is Parker? Parker is the World's Best 
Chauffeur. 

There are those who possess automobiles, and 
those who are possessed by them; and there Is my- 
self who have not so much as a flivver to my name. 



50 THE LONDON SPY 

I cannot afford a car, but I command ten cars and 
four chauffeurs. On the rare occasions when I re- 
quire to travel comfortably, a call to the garage 
round the corner gives me my choice of these cars 
and — Parker. And should one car, on the road, 
forget its ofiice, a word across the telephone brings 
up another. There I score over the car-owner; but 
my highest score against him is with Parker. I do 
not have to tinker with the thing; I do not have 
to keep my eyes and nerves taut for the hazards of 
the road and warning signs. I am free to observe 
or to contemplate, to set my mind roaming where 
it will, thanks to Parker, the wizard, whose magic 
touch on his mechanical slave, carries me across 
England. 

When I am with him I throw aside all care, and 
my motto for the day is: "Leave it to Parker." 
He has not the haughtiness and severity of your 
private chauffeur, nor the broody dolours of your 
taxi-man. He is not a part of his machine. When 
cars were but thought of, Parker was driving a pair- 
horse brougham, and the flexibility and fluent tem- 
per required by that job remained with him. He 
has a strong air of past times about him. He is a 
rehabilitation of one of the old artists of the whip. 
He would look fit in a five-caped coat, and his round 
red face was made for a low-crowned beaver. He 
would be in his place, taking the Devonport "Quick- 
silver" down the road; and "Nimrod" would have 



IN THE THICK OF IT 51 

delighted to sit by him and record in the pages of 
"Fraser's" his talk and his mannerisms. 

It is a pity that we have no C. J. Apperley with 
us to-day, to mark and celebrate the pretty styles 
of our best chauffeurs, (Here's a hint for John 
Prioleau). Parker deserves such notice. Driving 
a car is not, with him, a job. It is his daily stimu- 
lant. He misses a day from the wheel as other 
men miss their morning drink or their dinner. He 
is only happy on his car, and not to be driving is a 
keen punishment. Each morning he goes to the 
garage with a fresh delight, as if motors had just 
been invented, and each night he puts the car away 
regretfully. Away from it, he is lost, unhappy. 
Keep him out as long as you like, and he never com- 
plains. His car is his mistress, and she seems to 
return his caresses. He starts her up with a throb 
of joy. He leaps to her and he settles into his seat 
with a Wrrhmph! of content. His touch is soft 
and soothing. He does not, like your taxi-driver, 
jam his brakes on; almost one might say he strokes 
them on, so light is the contact of his hand with the 
lever. His manner at the steering-wheel has the 
finish and precision of Cinquevalli or Chaplin; no- 
where too light or too stern. And his back, to the 
passenger inside, is not the sombre mass of spleen 
that your taxi-man presents, but a big, generous, 
equable back, able and willing to carry all the bur- 
dens of the day; a round affable back, that looks 



52 THE LONDON SPY 

as though it had often been smacked in loud good- 
fellowship. I wonder what would happen to a fare 
who gave a taxi-driver or a private chauffeur a 
friendly smack on the back; summons for assault, 
I expect. 

Parker and I have covered many hundred miles 
of English road, and have taken long tours together. 
He is a perfect road-companion. Nothing disturbs 
him. You cannot surprise him, and he will never 
surprise you. He is ready for anything; never dis- 
mayed by mischances or change of plan, but facing 
all the hazards and petty emergencies of English 
travel with equanimity, and their amenities with a 
round noonday smile. If you're out of matches, 
Parker has plenty. If you're short of cigarettes, 
Parker's got some. If you want a postcard and a 
stamp, Parker's got 'em. If you've got a headache, 
Parker will produce menthol. At all hours of the 
day or night — and he has often been out with me 
all night — he is the same blithe soul : a good Cock- 
ney, taking his banana, in the most tiresome situa- 
tions, with relish. 

Little he cares if it snows. Even his language, 
when a tyre bursts, is not bitter and explosive, but 
full and round and copious, flowing steadily like an 
Arabic imprecation. We have heard how our Army 
swore terribly in Flanders, and I think it must have 
sworn with equal vigour in Serbia; for Parker spent 
the five years of the war driving lorries over the 



IN THE THICK OF IT 53 

Serbian mountains, and making his own roads. After 
that, the troublous occasions of English road-travel 
have no power to dishevel his philosophy; and, 
though he speaks to a burst tyre in unforgettable 
accents, whatever gust of language comes from him, 
comes with the large flavour of the open-air upon 
It. It is without malice. I have been with him In the 
middle of the Yorkshire wold. In a pouring rain, 
with a disordered magneto; and he was unmoved. 
He did but look upon the thing, and say, In con- 
versational tones, beautiful things that had In them 
the warmth of the sun and red wine and the south 
wind; and then got down to the job, remembering 
that he was on a Yorkshire wold and not on the 
Serbian hills. 

Often I spend a loose half-hour In his garage. 
The yard Is open day and night, and wears an 
atmosphere of Illimitable travel. To the fanciful 
the mere sight of the garage, with Its adumbrations 
of adventure, sets the heart tingling. Sitting In 
Parker's yard I am In the midst of movement; of 
stories of encounters, of Inns and old towns and 
long roads; of the going and returning of cars. They 
could tell some stories of their clients, Parker and 
his colleagues, but, unhappily, they don't. They are 
discreet. They hear nothing and they see nothing 
of their clients' affairs. But, In the lighted evening, 
when they return from journeys large or little, the 
yard Is full of good gossip and anecdotal road-talk, 



54 THE LONDON SPY 

more interesting, to me, than any other casual talk; 
and, listening, one may compile one's own Gary or 
Paterson. Some, maybe, are returned from the 
North or the West Country, and some from station 
or theatre trips to town. Then Parker, big and bluff 
and Imperturbable, comes in from South Wales, 
redolent of the road; and sets out again, to take 
an old lady on a half-mile stage. 

There is a pleasant new-world flavour about it. 
Until ten years ago, talk of the delights of the road 
meant quotation from old coaching books. One 
harked back to the 'twenties. Now, they are present 
delights. The gusto which animated the road-chap- 
ters of Dickens, "NImrod," de Quincey, Disraeli 
and BIrch-Reynardson, plays again about our high- 
ways and roadside villages and Inns. We are all 
in this. The sharrabang has re-opened the road 
for the poorest of us, and we can all catch the tang 
of open-air travel and the ecstasy of speed, which 
the railway cannot lend you. Even the drivers of 
the motor-coaches are assuming something of the 
box-seat manner, acquiring something of Parker. 
Once out of London, they give hints of a life apart 
from levers. They have their moods of levity. They 
exchange back-chat with the guard. The old road- 
spirit seizes them, and if you have made a reading 
of Outram Tristram, Charles G. Harper, and other 
road-historians, and follow it with a sharrabang 
trip, you will find that only the vehicle has changed. 



IN THE THICK OF IT 55 

All else remains. Passengers, driver and guard are 
wearing different clothes, but the incidents of the 
trip repeat themselves out of history. Still the 
village worthies come to their doors to see us pass, 
and the children to wave and shout. Still the driver 
and guard have their favourite damsels, whom they 
salute in passing with elaborate pantomime that per- 
mits no misunderstanding. Still they execute com- 
missions in town for the remote roadside folk, and 
drop choice packages into front gardens, or carry 
the evening paper from the nearest town and toss 
It to Granfer at the cross-roads. 

Perhaps the new-old spirit is not so lively in the 
inns; but I am a little sceptical of some of those 
glowing pictures of Mine Hosts and their impos- 
sibly hospitable establishments. Different travellers 
record different impressions. Dickens himself has 
given us descriptions in much milder mood than 
those of "Pickwick." Even in that book he speaks 
out at times, as in the descriptions of the "White 
Horse" at Ipswich, a true picture, I imagine, of the 
average coaching inn of those times. Read the 
essays in "The Uncommercial Traveller" on "Re- 
freshments for Travellers," on "Jairing's" and "The 
Old-Established Bull's Head, with its old-established 
cookery, and its old-established frowziness, and its 
old-established principles of plunder," and the 
description of the "Temeraire Hotel" in "A Little 
Dinner in an Hour." 



56 THE LONDON SPY 

The strictures which he passes on the inns of 
his time are sadly true to-day. Seldom do you, 
travelling life's dull round, find your welcome at 
an inn. In many parts, If you travel in a sharrabang, 
you are met with the notice : "Char-a-banc Parties 
Not Served." 

Still, the delight of the road mostly tunes us to 
delight in everything. We are in a state to be 
easily pleased, serenely reconciled to discourtesy, and 
finding an ill-cooked meal as agreeable and stimulat- 
ing as a dinner at our favourite town restaurant. And 
when I am out with Parker, he sees to It that I am 
not put upon. It is as dangerous to be funny or 
brusque with Parker as to monkey with a safety- 
razor. He Is a member of the A. A. and the M. U. 
and he Is not standing any nonsense from inn-keepers 
who fall from the standards demanded by those 
organisations for their members. Let there be any 
over-charging or ill-service, and Parker will see to 
it. Parker will report it. Temperate as he is, he 
can, for the occasion, be truculent; and he has a 
robust figure and a heavy arm. The most severe 
landlord would quail before his "here — what's this?" 
Simple words, but they can carry much. With him 
behind you, you need fear not the heat of the sun 
or the Winter's furious rages; or any machinations 
of the wicked. No highwayman would have held up 
his coach; at the sudden turn of the head, the im- 
placable face, and the "Hi — what d'ye think you're 



IN THE THICK OF IT 57 

doing? Want me to set about you?" Mr. Turpin 
would have been off and away. And had I been 
a passenger, and a pistol had been thrust through 
the window, I would have dismissed the matter with : 
"Ask Parker about it!" 

And Parker would see to it, as he sees to every- 
thing. He drives you as you wish to be driven. 
He attends to your comfort. He anticipates your 
little whims and remembers your habits. He is a 
happy companion, as I know from evenings we have 
spent together when on a tour; and while you are 
his passenger, he is your friend, counsellor, and 
protector. 

And so home and to bed. 



—II— 

IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 

THE film-world of London begins in Soho, over- 
flows into Shaftesbury Avenue and Gerrard 
Street, and stretches to the suburbs, where studios 
are established at Walthamstow, Ealing, Shepherd's 
Bush, Twickenham, Elstree, and Whetstone. It is a 
queer world of queer people; a serious world, want- 
ing the zest and camaraderie of the stage-world or 
the quiet zeal of the business w^orld. It is a bastard, 
parents unknown. Your film-director has the ap- 
pearance of something between a ring-master and 
a Junior Whip, and the business and executive side 
of the industry attracts attention by its facial fea- 
tures and its Oriental nomenclature. But these are 
found throughout the entertainment world and in 
any industry whose profits turn on exploiting the idle 
hours of the public. Your film-actor is. a creature 
apart. 

He has little in common with the stage-actor. 
He is not gregarious. His speechless work has left 
him with little facility for chit-chat and none for 
happy talk. Mostly he is glum, like the taxi-driver, 
the lift-man, and others who work with mechanical 
things. He lives in an atmosphere, not of imagina- 

58 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 59 

tlon (that quality would damn his chances of en- 
gagements), but of reality. When he goes out to 
rescue the damsel from the sinking boat, he does 
rescue her from a real sinking boat In real water; 
he is incapable of deluding his audience with simu- 
lated heroisms. To convince an audience by illusion 
demands higher qualities than he possesses. Rap- 
tures, fine gestures, sweeping movements, splendid 
outbursts are forbidden him; the machine has no 
use for them. Repression, not expression, Is the note 
of his work, and every movement must be slow and 
deliberate. No audience Inspires his efforts or re- 
wards his response to that inspiration. He plays 
to the producer and the machine. His world's a 
shadow-show played In a box under white lights, 
and inspiration may not enter that box. He has 
nothing to do but obey the producer; his not to 
reason why; his but to do what he's told, comforted 
by knowing that every effort has been "thought out," 
arrived at, without his help, by the system of the 
cash-register. And as he Is In his work, so he is 
in his private life, considering and calculating; a 
creature of languid gesture with a dull light to the 
eye. 

Life, for him. Is no hectic kaleidoscope of work, 
crowds, the ascending hosannas of the multitude. 
He is never, like your stage-actor, who works 
through his Imagination, ablaze with personality. 
He moves, in his own person, through greater actual 



60 THE LONDON SPY 

trials and tribulations than any actor Is called upon 
to simulate; yet always he Is morose and low-splrlted. 
For his moving accidents are Isolated occasions, 
nicely calculated. His work Is a slow-moving mat- 
ter, Involving much preparation and hanging about, 
but, If done once. It Is done. He does not have to 
work himself up six nights a week, to do the same 
old thing that he has been doing for three hundred 
nights, and do It well. Even his breathless rescues 
from cliff-faces are quieter occasions than the "big 
scene" of a bedroom comedy. Truly, his profes- 
sional life Is as flat and monotonous as the life of 
a bank clerk. There Is no excitement in carrying the 
girl from the burning house. No acting, no per- 
sonal Interest are required for these "stunt-mer- 
chants." You have only to perform the deed. In 
the right clothes, and then you're finished. The 
cheery, chatty crowd at a theatrical rehearsal, ab- 
rupt, generous, free, is the precise opposite of the 
film-studio company, which has somewhat the at- 
mosphere of a parish-hall meeting of church-work- 
ers. They look worried. They drift from instead 
of to their fellows. Your actor's instinct is to get 
together; your filmist's to go apart Into a desert 
place. Heartiness and Impulse are alien virtues to 
him. 

No wonder they call It "the silent stage." 
When Monk and I were invited recently by the 
producer of a prominent London film company to 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 61 

spend a day at his studio, we readily accepted, for 
we wanted to see something of the marvellous "in- 
side" processes that produced this queer form of 
entertainment. We both love to see the wheels go 
round. We arrived at Islington, and found that 
the "studio" was a dismantled power-station — a 
tremendous barn of a place, which, despite the warm 
day, struck coldly. It was lofty and full of echoes, 
and its floor was littered with thick lines of light- 
ing cables. On all sides were little islands of "sets," 
and we were led through halls, through a drawing- 
room, through a dining-room, through the fore- 
court of a country mansion, and stumbled over cables 
and against the million-candle-power arc-lamp be- 
fore we found our producer, with a shade over his 
eyes, directing his people in a bed-room "set." 
Around this set were adjusted a number of iron 
frames, each holding a dozen glass cylinders of 
blinding white-green light. Over it, in what might 
be the flies, were the great arc-lamps. Each of these 
contraptions was in charge of a youth, and these 
youths were controlled by a chief, who gave them 
their orders and adjusted the apparatus at the wish 
of the camera-man. All were wearing eye-shades. 

Outside the set sat those actors not immediately 
concerned but ready for their call, dressed and made- 
up. Immediately in front of the set was the slim 
movie-camera and the camera-man, and near him the 
bulky "still" camera, and its operator. Also in front 



62 THE LONDON SPY 

sat a girl with a scenario before her, whose business 
it was to watch the dress of each character. Often 
two consecutive scenes of a film-play are filmed 
months apart and in different places, and this girl 
must note the dress of each actor, even to the most 
minute details; so that a character shall not be seen 
arriving at the door of a house wearing a bow-tie 
and immediately entering the drawing-room in a knot- 
tie. Still, with the keenest eye and the most volumin- 
ous notes to assist, these things do happen, and the 
producer is blamed, as he is blamed for everything. 
Serves him right, too, for taking so much upon his 
own shoulders. 

We didn't discover what was the theme of the 
picture they were making. I asked one of the actors, 
and he said he hadn't been told yet what the plot 
was : he only knew that he stole some valuable 
papers. Monk, who had at once turned an eye to 
the lovely leading woman, approached her, but she 
wasn't quite sure about it. She thought it was taken 
from some popular novel, and only knew that she 
was the daughter of a new-rich man who was getting 
into society. 

I had expected tumult and shouting, hustle and 
raucous voices. I found nothing of this. The busi- 
ness was far, far less vocal and gestic than a Borough 
Council meeting. The only persistent noise was the 
hiss of the arc-lamps. Through that came, perfunc- 
torily, the quiet voice of the producer: "We'll 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 63 

just have that over again, Miss Gwyn. Like this, 
you see." He entered the "set" and demonstrated, 
and while this private dancing-lesson was in progress, 
the rest of the company and workers gazed about 
them or brooded. Curious terms were uttered — the 
jargon of the studios: "Cross it;" "kill it," "Iris," 
"Hold it." The faces of the actors outside the 
arc-lamps were overlaid with powder and showed 
ghastly yellow; those within the glare looked sea- 
sick. Then a peremptory voice fell from above. 

"Light 'em up!" 

With a click of levers the long lights of the great 
frames went up. Then, with megaphone, the pro- 
ducer directed the shot, in a slow, conversational 
tone. There was no excitement, no harassing. 

"Camera ! Come on, Butler. Come on, detective. 
Come on, lady's maid. Agitated coming on . . . 
Now for his right arm. . . . Knee in his 
back. . . . Down him. Struggle. . . . Fix him. 
Fine !" 

He clapped his hands. The camera stopped. The 
actors scrambled up from the bedroom floor. The 
lost voice snapped "lights out!" And again all was 
silence. The producer called a few people together, 
and conferred with carpenter and electricians and 
the scenario-writer. A "still" was taken of a dra- 
matic point in the picture, and there were more con- 
ferences. Large notices on the walls prohibit smok- 
ing, but everybody smoked. Nothing seemed to be 



64 THE LONDON SPY 

happening. The machinists lounged in shirt-sleeves 
against the lamps. Then the producer: 

"Crowd for Bow Street, please !" 

The crowd came forward readily and amiably; as 
though long familiar with Bow Street and its pro- 
cedure. The producer and his assistant arranged 
them. What a crowd! Surely the highways and 
hedges had been raked for these, for they were not 
pretending to be idlers, loungers, wastrels; they were 
what they looked. "Types," said the producer. 
"Types. That's what we want in this game. Not 
the suggested character, but the types. Externals 
always. We don't want character-actors, however 
perfect they may be. We want types of familiar 
character. And you wouldn't believe how difficult 
it is to get 'em. I put out a call last week for a 
private detective. Did I get one? No. I had two 
hundred apphcants — and every one was a bloody 
actor!" 

The crowd got into place, and the producer moved 
among them, posing and miming and explaining. 
They followed his movements with intent eyes, pel- 
manising each gesture, and practising it to them- 
selves. The big frames of light were shifted from 
position to position, and then for the next ten minutes 
the crowd was drilled and drilled until it was pro- 
ficient. They were not drilled by the method of 
the old-style pantomime producer, with his oaths and 
his personal affronts, who worked off his own temper 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 65 

and exacerbated the tempers of his supers. They 
were coached gently, slowly and with unfailing 
courtesy and patience; and the helpless dud was not 
summarily dismissed. He was politely put off. "I 
think Mr. — er — Jones is it? I think I'll ask you 
to stand aside for awhile. I can use you better in 
the garden crowd." 

A pleasant spirit prevailed; subdued, but pleasant; 
and It was most prevalent at mid-day, when all the 
workers, like freed school children, trooped upstairs 
to the restaurant for lunch. All lunched together 
— producer, principals (in their yellow make-up), 
electricians, carpenters, commissionaires, porters, 
clerks; and there was no line of demarcation. The 
junior electrician sat next to the star, and the com- 
missionaire next the producer. No one of them, 
alone, could ensure the success of the film. Actor 
or actress can sometimes "make" a play, but with 
the film It is entirely a matter of joint effort, and 
the "star" is no more important than any other. 
The cinema is a democratic institution, and it was 
pleasant to see the democratic spirit aliv^e at head- 
quarters. At afternoon tea, which was served down- 
stairs in the studio, the same quiet amenities pre- 
vailed. There was no bright chatter: it was not 
the beanfeast that a touring company of actors would 
have made it. Seriousness was the note, but It was a 
seriousness which all shared. The subordinates — 
the carpenters, machinists, and boys — had not that 



66 THE LONDON SPY 

air of "When the hell are we going to finish and 
get away?" One felt that they were intensely inter- 
ested; intensely. 

It seemed a pity to me, though, that all this effort 
and intensity and money and thought should be given 
to such poor material. The "artistes" were mere 
lay figures, using neither wit nor understanding, but 
moving to the order of the producer. And every- 
thing in this studio was genuine. In the film-studio 
they have no time for the creation of atmosphere 
by illusion. The great drama may be performed on 
a blank stage with a back-cloth, but the novelette of 
the film cannot exist without wild changes of time 
and place and the trapping of exclamatory externals. 
Not the fine suggestion of reality, but the raw pic- 
ture of reality is all it can achieve. (I am dreading 
every day a "picture" of magic casements opening 
on the foam of perilous seas In fairy lands forlorn). 
The oak panelling In the dining-room set was not 
carven cardboard; it was oak panelling, bought at 
great expense. The brick fireplace was brick. The 
books in the book-cases were real books. The jewels 
were real jewels. The silk dresses and the furs, the 
old tapestry, the Knellers and Lelys, were the real 
thing, hired at great trouble. Long thought and 
care had obviously gone to the making of this ob- 
vious nonsense. The best that could be had was 
gathered for the production of the utterly unworthy. 
It was as though the Medici Society were to produce 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 67 

in Riccardi type, on real vellum, each copy signed 
by authors and artists, the current issues of "Comic 
Cuts" and "Forget-me-Not." 

Still, the film is with us and the cinema-palace is 
with us, and they have become part of modern life. 
The cinema palace has brightened dull suburbs, both 
by its external bridecake appearance and its func- 
tions, and the film has brought a flicker of outside 
life into desolate villages. It has rejoiced us with 
moving processions of radiant women and exquisite 
children. Its pictures of living things in motion are 
a wonder and a delight, and if only it wouldn't try 
to tell stories, it would be wholly pleasant. But 
with all its faults, it has filled an empty patch with 
brightness. Think of the wet evenings, before the 
cinema came, when we couldn't go out with Dolly, 
or, if we did, had to stand in shelter under shop- 
awnings; and of dreary Sunday nights of Winter, 
when we went sadly up and down the monkeys' 
parade. Now, a wet evening never disturbs the youth 
of the town. In he goes to the cinema, for 
nine-penn'orth of cheer-up and a little canood- 
ling. 

But it's always the way. Directly things are made 
a little easier for youth, along come the hard-faced 
to say "You shan't." When one of the many repres- 
sions and restrictions of youth is lifted, some busy- 
body hears about it, and invents another. And now 
there are actually horrid old people going about 



68 THE LONDON SPY 

the picture-palaces, trying to order managers to keep 
the lights up, or, if that be impracticable, to em- 
ploy some one to keep an eye on the behaviour of 
the audience In the cheaper seats. Damned impertin- 
ence ! Happily, it is ineffectual. As the young man 
of good family said to the magistrate, when fined 
and seriously admonished for untowardly behaviour 
on Hampstead Heath — "Your Worship, you can talk 
and talk, and legislate and legislate, but you'll never 
make loving unpopular." 

The cinema is at once a refuge and a playground, 
where the boys and the girls, despite the peepers, 
"get off," more quickly and more comfortably than 
in the High Street. During the Intervals, when the 
lights are up, they look round, and meet an eye. In- 
viting or challenging; and when the lights are down 
again, the boy changes seats and draws nearer, and 
a question Is hazarded. 

"D'you like Wallace Reid?" 

"I think I like William Hart best. I like men 
who do brave things." 

"Seen many of Lillian Gish's pictures?" 

"I see her In 'Broken Blossoms,' but I didn't like 
that. Too miserable, I thought. I don't like sad 
things. D'you come to the pictures much?" 

And so on. Common ground is discovered In 
"Charlie," and when his picture comes on, a hand 
roams In the dark and finds another hand, and fingers 
tighten; and there you are In the soft primrose mist, 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 69 

with bits of the Fifth Symphony steahng through, 
and magic cowboys and supernal villains and hill- 
top heroines casting their magnificent shadows on 
the white sheet and — ooh, let's get closer. That's 
what the cinema is for; that's its true function — a 
club for young lovers. The bright youth can always 
find company in the cinema, afternoon and evenings, 
though the afternoon girls are of a different class — 
high-school and apt to prove expensive in the matter 
of chocolates. 

Then there are the lighting and the music of the 
cinema. With lights down it has a wonderful colour 
and appeal; a sort of luminous shade, through which, 
from the front, the dusky faces of the audience seem 
to glow palely. Features are lost; one sees only 
something between shape and shadow, and curling 
cigarette smoke. That light is the correct light for 
the enjoyment of music. It rests the eye and refines 
the ear, and I wish that our concert-artists and con- 
ductors would adopt it for their recitals. 

Seen at close quarters the faces are curiously pla- 
cid and empty. I cannot define the state of mind of 
the cinema audience ; I only know that it differs widely 
from the state of mind of the theatre audience. The 
theatre audience is homogeneous; it is gathered in 
one common bond, inspired by one impulse — the de- 
sire to see that play. The cinema audience may 
have gathered from many mixed motives. It may 
have come to see one of five or six pictures — to 



70 THE LONDON SPY 

canoodle — to go to sleep — to take shelter — or to 
have a rest between shopping. It is vague, diffuse, 
without common contact. It Is not Indeed an audi- 
ence; It Is an assembly of units, each separate and 
enclosed In his own darkness, and though each unit 
is moved by the antics of Charlie, there Is no mass 
spirit in the emotion or the laughter. It is not the 
laughter of a crowd, but some hundreds of single 
laughs bursting out of dark corners and knowing 
nothing of nor sharing the neighbouring laughs. At 
a theatre strangers laugh towards and In accord with 
each other; but the laughter of the cinema is mor- 
bid, secret; the damned laughter of the solitary. As 
an assembly it Is complacent and Inert, never lit by 
the receptive interest of the theatre audience; and 
the entertainment provided confirms It In Its compla- 
cence. Nothing shocks; everything flows smoothly 
towards the expected end, and the music flows with 
it, and the young hold hands and the elders look 
bovine. 

It Is a gathering of shadows looking upon 
shadows, and it comes to life only when it steps from 
the twilight drama into the substantial streets. 

• •••••• 

And yet It was this mechanical process that pre- 
sented to the world the mercurial personality of 
Charles Chaplin, the only mime that It has yet dis- 
covered; gave him, In fact, the only medium through 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 71 

which he could express himself. I wonder if I can 
sketch for you this rare, elusive character. . . . 

A frail figure, slim footed, and with hands as 
exquisite as the hands of Madame la Marquise. A 
mass of brindled gray hair above a face of high 
colour and nervous features. In conversation the 
pale hands flash and flutter and the eyes twinkle; 
the body sways and swings, and the head darts bird- 
like back and forth, in time with the soft chanting 
voice. His personality is as volatile as the lithe and 
resilient figure. He has something of Hans Ander- 
sen, of Ariel, freakish and elvish, and touched with 
rumours of far-off fairyland tears. But something 
more than pathos is here. Almost, I would say, he 
is a tragic figure. Through the international agency 
of the cinematograph he has achieved world-fame in 
larger measure than any man of recent years, and he 
knows the weariness and emptiness that accompany 
excess. He is the playfellow of the world, and he 
is the loneliest, saddest man I ever knew. 

• •••... 

When I first heard that Charles Spencer Chaplin 
wished to meet me, I was only mildly responsive. 
But I was assured that Charles Chaplin was "dif- 
ferent," and finally a rendezvous was made at a flat 
in Bloomsbury. He is different. I was immediately 
surprised and charmed. A certain transient glamour 
hung about this young man to whose doings the front 
pages of the big newspapers were given, and for a 



72 THE LONDON SPY 

sight of whom people of all classes were doing vigil; 
but discounting that, much remained; and the shy, 
quiet figure that stepped back from the shadow of 
the window was no mere film star, but a character 
that made an instant appeal. I received an im- 
pression of something very warm and bright and 
vivid. There was radiance, but it was the radiance 
of fluttering firelight rather than steady sunlight. 
At first I think it was the pathos of his situation 
that made him so endearing, for he was even then 
being pursued by the crowd, and had taken this op- 
portunity to get away for a quiet walk through nar- 
row streets. But the charm remained, and remains 
still. It is a part of himself that flows through every 
movement and every gesture. He inspires imme- 
diately, not admiration or respect, but affection; 
and one gives it impulsively. 

At eleven o'clock that night I took him alone for 
a six-hour ramble through certain districts of East 
London, whose dim streets made an apt setting for 
his dark-flamed personality. I walked him through 
byways of Hoxton, Spitalfields, Stepney, Ratcliff, 
Shadwell, Wapping, Isle of Dogs; and as we walked 
he opened his heart, and I understood. I, too, had 
spent inhospitable hours of youth in these streets, 
and knew his feeling about them, and could, in a 
minor measure, appreciate what he felt in such high 
degree at coming back to them with his treasure of 
guerdons and fame. The disordered, gipsy-like 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 73 

beauty of this part of London moved him to ecstasy 
after so many years of the angular, gemlike cities of 
Western America, and he talked freely and well 
about it. 

At two o'clock in the morning we rested on the 
kerb of an alley-way in St. George's and he talked of 
his bitter youth and his loneliness and his struggles, 
and the ultimate bewildering triumph. Always, from 
the day he left London, he had at the back of his 
mind, the foolish dream of a triumphal Dick Whit- 
tington return to the city whose stones were once so 
cold to him; for the most philosophic temper, the 
most aloof from the small human passions, is not 
wholly free from that attitude of "a time will come 
when you shall hear me." Like all men who are 
born in exile, outside the gracious inclosures of life, 
he does not forget those early years; and even now 
that he has made that return it does not quite satisfy. 
How should it? It is worth having — that hot mo- 
ment when the scoffers are dumb and recognition Is 
accorded; the moment of attainment; but a tinge of 
bitterness must always accompany it. Chaplin knew, 
as all who have risen know, that the very people 
who were clamouring and beseeching him to their 
tables and receptions would not before have given 
him a considered glance, much less a friendly hand 
or a level greeting. They wanted to see, not him, 
but the symbol of success — le dernier cri — and he 
knew it. 



74 THE LONDON SPY 

He owes little enough to England. To him it was 
only a stony-hearted step-mother — not even the land 
of his birth. Here, as he told me, he was up against 
that social barrier that so impedes advancement 
and achievement — a barrier that only the very great 
or the very cunning can cross. America freely gave 
him what he could never have wrested from Eng- 
land — recognition and decent society. He spoke in 
chilly tones of his life in England as a touring vaude- 
ville artist. Such a life is a succession of squalor 
and mean things. A round of intolerable struggles 
against the unendurable. The company was his so- 
cial circle, and he lived and moved only in that sterile 
circle. Although he had not then any achievements 
to his credit, he had the potentialities. Although 
he was then a youth with little learning, an unde- 
veloped personality, and few graces, he had an in- 
stinctive feeling for fine things. Although he had 
no key by which he might escape, no title to a place 
among the fresh, easy, cultivated minds where he de- 
sired to be, he knew that he did not belong in the 
rude station of life in which he was placed. Had 
he remained in this country, he would have remained 
in that station. He would never have got out. But 
in America the questions are "What do you know?" 
and "What can you do?" not, "Where do you come 
from?" and "Who are your people?" "Are you 
public school?" 

To-day England is ready to give all that it for- 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 75 

merly denied him. All doors are open to him, and 
he is beckoned here and there by social leaders. 
But he does not want them. Well might he and 
others who have succeeded after lean years employ 
to these lion-hunters the terms of a famous letter: 
"The notice which you have been pleased to take of 
my labours, had it been early had been kind; but It 
has been delayed till I am Indifferent and cannot 
enjoy it . . . till I am known and do not want It." 
But twice during our ramble — once In Mile End 
Road and once in Hoxton — he was recognised, and 
the midnight crowd gathered and surrounded him. 
There, It was the real thing — not the vulgar desire 
of the hostess to feed the latest lion, but a burst of 
hearty affection, a welcome to an old friend. He 
has played himself into the hearts of the simple 
people, and they love him. The film "Charlie" Is a 
figure that they understand, for It Is a type of 
thwarted ambitions, of futile strivings and forlorn 
makeshifts for better things. As I watched the frail 
figure struggling against this burst of enthusiasm, 
In which voices hot with emotion, voices of men and 
women, cried boisterous messages of good will to 
"our Charlie," I was foolishly moved. No Prime 
Minister could have so fired a crowd. No Prince 
of the House of Windsor could have commanded 
that wave of sheer delight. He might have had the 
crowd and the noise, but not the rich surge of af- 
fection. A prince is only a spectacle, a symbol of 



76 THE LONDON SPY 

nationhood, but this was a known friend, one of 
themselves, and they treated him so. It was no mere 
instinct of the mob. They did not gather to stare 
at him. Each member of that crowd wanted pri- 
vately to touch him, to enfold him, to thank him for 
cheering them up. And they could do so without 
reservation or compunction, for they could not have 
helped him in his early years — they were without 
the power. I do not attempt to explain why this 
one man, of all other "comics" of stage and film has 
so touched the hearts of adulation. It is beyond me. 
I could only stand and envy the man who had done 
it. 

Yet he found little delight in it. Rather, he was 
bewildered. I think his success staggers or frightens 
him. Where another might be spoiled he is dazed. 
The "Charlie," the figure of fun that he created in a 
casual moment, has grown upon him like a Franken- 
stein monster. It and its world-wide popularity have 
become a burden to him. That it has not wholly 
crushed him, ejected his true self and taken posses- 
sion of him, is proof of a strong character. Your 
ordinary actor is always an actor "on" and "off." 
But as I walked and talked with Chaplin I found my- 
self trying vainly to connect him, by some gesture 
or attitude, with the world-famous "Charlie." 
There was no trace of it. When, a little later, I saw 
one of his films, I again tried to see through the 
makeup the Chaphn I had met, and again I failed. 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 77 

The down of the films is purely a studio creature, 
having little in common with its creator; for Chaplin 
is not a funny man. He is a great actor of comic 
parts. Every second of his pictures is acted, and 
when he is not acting, he casts off "Charlie," drops 
the mask of the world's fool, and his queer, glamor- 
ous personality is released again. 

He described to me the first conception of his 
figure of fun — the poor fool, of forlorn attitudes, 
who would be a gentleman, and never can; who 
would do fine and beautiful things, and always does 
them in the wrong way and earns kicks in place of 
acceptance and approval. At every turn the world 
beats him, and because he cannot fight it he puts his 
thumb to his nose. He rescues fair damsels, and 
finds that they are not fair. He departs on great 
enterprises that crumble to rubbish at his first touch. 
He builds castles in the air, and they fall and crush 
him. He picks up diamonds, and they turn to broken 
glass and cut his fingers; and at the world's disdain 
he shrugs his shoulders and answers its scorn with 
rude jests and extravagant antics. He is sometimes 
an ignoble Don Quixote, sometimes a gallant Pistol, 
and in other aspects a sort of battered Pierrot, with 
a mordant dash of the satyr. All other figures of 
fun in literature and drama have associates or foils. 
"Charlie," in all his escapades, is alone. He is the 
outcast, the exile, sometimes getting a foot within the 
gates, but ultimately being driven out, hopping 



78 THE LONDON SPY 

lamely, with ill-timed nonchalance, on the damaged 
foot. He throws a custard pie in the world's face 
as a gesture of protest. He kicks policemen lest 
himself be kicked. There is no exuberance in the 
kick; it is no outburst of vitality. It is deliberate 
and considered. Behind every farcical gesture is a 
deadly intent. Never do the eyes, in his most strenu- 
ous battles with authority, lose their deep-sunken 
haunting grief. Always he is the unsatisfied, venting 
his chagrin in a heart-broken levity of quips and 
capers. Chaplin realised that there is nothing more 
generally funny than the solemn clown, and in 
"Charlie" he accidentally made a world-fool; 
though, I think, certain memories of early youth 
went to its making. 

But I am more interested in the man than his 
work. When, at four o'clock in the morning, he 
came home with me to Highgate and sat round the 
fire, I felt still more warmly his charm and still more 
sharply his essential discontent. I do not mean that 
he is miserable — he is indeed one of the merriest of 
companions; but he is burdened with a deep-rooted 
disquiet. He is the shadow-friend of millions 
throughout the world, and he is lonely. He is tired, 
too, and worn, this young man whose name and 
face are known in every habitable part of the world. 
It is not a temporary fatigue, as of a man who is 
overworking or running at too high a pitch. His 
weariness, I think, lies deeper. It is of the spirit. 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 79 

To the quick melancholy of the Latins — for he is 
Anglo-French, and was born at Fontainebleau — is 
added that unrest which men miscall the artistic tem- 
perament. But even without these he could not, I 
think, command happiness. He is still an exile, seek- 
ing for something that the world cannot give him. It 
has given him much — great abilities, fame, fortune, 
applause; yet it has given him, for his needs, little. 
The irony that pursues genius has not let him escape. 
He is hungry for affection and friendship, and he 
cannot hold them. With the very charm that draws 
would-be friends towards him goes a perverse trick 
of repulsing them. He desires friendship, yet has 
not the capacity for it. "I am egocentric," he con- 
fessed. To children everywhere his name brings 
gurgles of delight; and children embarrass him. He 
has added one more to the great gallery of comic 
figures — Falstaff, Pickwick, Don Quixote, Uncle 
Toby, Micawber, Touchstone, Tartarin, Punchinello 
— and he hates "Charlie." 

He sat by the fire, curled up in a corner of a deep 
armchair like a tired child, eating shortbread and 
drinking wine and talking, talking, flashing from 
theme to theme with the disconcerting leaps of the 
cinematograph. He talked of the state of Europe, 
of relativity, of Benedetto Croce, of the possibility 
of a British Labour Government, of the fluidity of 
American social life, and he returned again and again 
to the subject of England. "It stifles me," he said- 



80 THE LONDON SPY 

"I'm afraid of it — it's all so set and solid and ar- 
ranged. Groups and classes. If I stayed here, I 
know I should go back to what I was. They told 
me that the war had changed England — had washed 
out boundaries and dividing lines. It hasn't. It's 
left you even more class-conscious than before. The 
country's still a mass of little regiments, each moving 
to its own rules. You've still the County People, 
the 'Varsity sets, the military caste — the Governing 
Classes, and the Working Classes. Even your sports 
are still divided. For one set, there are hunting, 
racing, yachting, polo, shooting, golf, tennis; and for 
the other cricket, football and betting. In America 
life is freer. There you can make your own life and 
find your own place among the people who interest 
you." 

And Chaplin has surrounded himself with quiet, 
pleasant people. Not his those monstrous antics of 
the young men and women whose empty heads have 
been shaken by wealth and mob worship. He is not 
one of the cafe-hotel-evening-party crowd. When 
the "shop" is shut, he gets well away from it and 
from the gum-chewing crowd to whom life is a piece 
of film and its prizes Great Possessions. You must 
see him as an unpretentious man, spending his eve- 
nings at home with a few friends and books and 
music. He is deeply read in philosophy, social his- 
tory, and economics. His wants are simple, and, 
although he has a vast income, he lives on but a 



IN THE STREETS OF FILM-LAND 81 

portion of it and shares everything with his brother 
Syd Chaplin. During the day he works, and works 
furiously, as a man works when seeking distraction 
or respite from his troubled inner self. What he 
will do next I do not know. He seems to be a man 
without aim or hope. What it is he wants, what he 
is seeking, to ensure a little heart's ease I do not 
know. 1 don't think he knows himself. This young 
man worked for an end, and in a few years he 
achieved it, and the world now stretches emptily be- 
fore him. 

I have here tried to present some picture of this 
strange, self-contradictory character; but it is a 
mere random sketch in outline, and gives nothing of 
the glittering, clustering light and shade of the origi- 
nal. You cannot pin him to paper. Even were he 
obscure, a mere nobody, without the imposed colour- 
ing of "Charlie" and world popularity, he would 
be a notable subject, for he has that wonderful, im- 
palpable gift of attraction which is the greater part 
of Mr. Lloyd George's power. You feel his pres- 
ence in a room, and are conscious of something want- 
ing when he departs. He has the rich-hued quality 
of Alvan in "The Tragic Comedians." You feel 
that he is capable of anything. And when you con- 
nect him with "Charhe" the puzzle grows and you 
give it up. The ambition that served and guided 
him for ten years is satisfied; but he is still unsatis- 



82 THE LONDON SPY 

fied. The world has discovered him, but he has not 
yet found himself. But he has discovered the weari- 
ness of repeated emotion, and he is a man who lives 
on and by his emotions. 



— Ill— 

IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 



B 



LIMEY!" said the Duchess, "this asparagus 
is all right." 

Years ago, when I first heard of this opening of 
a realistic society serial, I followed the custom of 
royalty and "laughed heartily." But now it isn't so 
funny; the incongruity isn't so marked. Since then 
I have heard a Duchess swear, and have met a Duke 
whose table manners were really odious. Yes, I 
have moved a little in the streets of rich men, among 
the demirepingtons; but I was always glad to get 
out again, back to nature. 

Mayfair and St, James are a little depressing to 
the sanguine. They hav^e nothing to say, and they 
don't say it. They don't have to say it. There they 
are, aloof and self-sufficient; there is nothing to be 
said; and their most emphatic gesture is a languid 
glance backward at history and tradition. Pall Mall, 
I think, is the saddest street in London. It has noth- 
ing to break its grievous monotony. It is the street 
of old men — distant In every sense from the street 
of beautiful children. It is worn and grey. It is 
sober and severe. Its face is set in heavy lines, and 
its mood is set. It is the England that makes laws 

83 



84 THE LONDON SPY 

and makes wars; the England that fears Bolshevism; 
the England that writes to the Times; recreant, for- 
bidding England, glowering at youth and the new 
spirit and the new system. There is nothing meaner 
than the charity of these people; nothing poorer than 
their riches; nothing sadder than their rejoicings. 

Why the rich Englishman, the most unclubbable 
of men, joins a club, I don't know. But his clubs 
reflect his spirit very clearly. They partake of the 
atmosphere of the church vestry and the public li- 
brary and the railway waiting-room. Men sit about, 
not comfortably, but as men sit when waiting for 
some occasion — the arrival of a train or the entry of 
the Chairman. They look as though they would be 
glad if something happened — anything — so long as 
it eased the tension. They H'm and they G'nrr, and 
they nod to one another; and they move with serious 
mien and obviously first-class carriage. I have not 
often seen an Englishman bored in his own home; 
but every Englishman in a club has an air of bore- 
dom at brcakingpolnt. 

Yet, even In this street of the sedate mood, I have 
had adventures. Even the clubs of rich men some- 
times throw up the quaint occasion. . . . 

The only man I know who belongs to a West End 
Club asked me the other night If I would dine with 
him at the Athenaeum upon a certain evening. I 
said I would, and to the Athenaeum I went, a little 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 85 

abashed and a little fluttered at the prospect of sit- 
ting as a guest in that august institution. 

Its cloistral calm is one of the beauties of London. 
As I stood in its great hall, after giv'ing my name to 
a retainer of the nobility, I felt a little depressed 
and conscious of my shapeless clothes. I noticed 
other shabby and down-at-heel fellows moving about 
the hall — members of the staff, I supposed. Through 
a glass door I perceived many gleaming heads bowed 
over newspapers and reviews. Very noble they 
looked, very grave, very rich In the spirit of Debrett 
and of mellow English landscapes. And then the 
old retainer stopped one of the unkempt figures in 
the hall and addressed him as Sir Charles; and then 
I was shown Into the smoking room; and I saw with 
something of relief that all Its occupants were as 
shabby as myself. I don't know why this relaxed 
my feelings, but it did. I felt I could talk to any of 
them. Some of them I recognised from published 
portraits — a playwright, a critic, a scientist, a 
philosopher — just ordinary people. And when I 
had been among them some few minutes I recognised 
how well their shabbiness suited both themselves and 
the spirit of the club. Its atmosphere Is a sort of 
animated hush, and that seemed to be the note of 
the company. Although the architectural scheme of 
the hall Is a little ornate, the place itself Is governed 
by a stately simplicity. Its dining-room Is simple, 
and Its kitchen makes no attempt at attracting re- 



86 THE LONDON SPY 

mark to itself. Fearful as I was at my first visit to 
the Athenaeum, I feel now, after several visits, that 
it is the most serene and easy club in London, where 
the most diffident creature may be at home. 

But how different the club to which my friend now 
conducted me ! Melbourne Inman, he said, was giv- 
ing a display at his "other" club, and we would go 
there. His other club was the Marlborough, and In 
ten minutes, I found myself among a group of ex- 
quisites in full evening toilet, all alert, calm and 
clean, standing or pacing in graceful but ready at- 
tendance upon the dinner-gong. The Marlborough 
Is a small club, founded by Edward VIL Its 
apartments are such as Its members would have in 
their own homes. There Is nothing obtrusive and 
nothing wanting. But the "note" is richer and deeper 
than the note of the Athenaeum; more set; more of 
the solid rich earth of the English shires than of the 
fluency of speculative thought. Its atmosphere Is 
suave and steady, and never wind blows loudly. In 
this domain it is always afternoon. Earls and 
Barons paced around me. They lounged or pot- 
tered. Oh, beautifully they lounged! Decidedly I 
was among the People and the Accent. How ele- 
gantly they carried their clothes I How beautifully 
their beautiful manner wasn't apparent. How per- 
fectly their shirt-fronts rested upon their noble 
chests, and their coats upon their shoulders: none 
of those little gaps or sticking-out bits that you and 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 87 

I experience. How courtler-like were these mem- 
bers of the Court's Own Club — so that you could 
never have placed them as courtiers or as anything 
but Idle gentlemen. I had expected to find them 
"talking passionately about the laws in a low under- 
tone," but the talk I heard was the talk you may 
hear In any suburban railway carriage. They bar- 
tered with one another inane quotations from the 
newspapers. They — 

Then I knew something had happened. There 
was a stir, a breath, as it were, sweeping slowly 
through the untroubled air of that room; a freshen- 
ing of the atmosphere as though a window had been 
opened In a parlour. 

Melbourne Inman had arrived. . . . 

A personality had entered, and had blotted out 
the exquisite negllglbles; and its vibrations went 
through and through the Marlborough Club. From 
Earls and Barons and Viscounts, and the fine flower 
of our English fields, he stood out; a piece of be- 
haviour of which no courtier would be guilty. But 
he didn't mean to do it, I'm sure. He looked flushed 
and flurried. He walked with ungainly steps. He 
didn't seem quite comfortable In this galley. He 
looked as uncomfortable as I felt I looked, and I 
sent him a thought-wave of sympathy at finding an- 
other soul not at ease in this temple of Zion. But 
perhaps he wasn't uncomfortable; he must be used 
to such doings; perhaps he was only bored. 



88 THE LONDON SPY 

But certainly he looked shy, spoke very quietly, 
and, at dinner, did little but smile and agree with the 
gracious company that attended and deferred to him. 
But how he effaced them all! At the guest's table 
were five others; but there was only one that drew 
the eye, and that the smallest, least Impressive of 
them. That table in a quiet corner was the centre 
of the room, and a stranger entering would instinc- 
tively have looked first at that party. Meanwhile 
Inman ate and beamed and murmured Yes and No, 
looking up only at Intervals. 

But in the billiards room, what a change. His 
diflldent manner he threw away with his coat. He 
beamed no more. His face set in quiet lines. And 
when he drew his cue from his case, it was as though 
he drew a sword and assumed a pose that made these 
others but sorry creatures. The moment it was in 
his hands the air of championship rayed out from 
him. Here was the craftsman among his materials, 
forgetful of the occasion, forgetful of courtiers and 
kings. He seemed to banish his hosts from his 
radius; they were not there. The crowd poured 
down and stood with intent eyes watching his pre- 
parations, and he had not even a glance for them. 
He was bursting with Inmanlty. The room was 
clogged with Inman and billiards table. 

With magnificent gesture he stretched his cue and 
chalked it. With the manner of a master he exam- 
ined the balls. If only those inept folk who are 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 89 

called upon to perform the solemn rite of laying a 
foundation stone or launching a ship, or unveiling a 
statue — which is usually fumbled, with a miserable 
compromise between the reverent and the casual, the 
aloof and the intimate — if only these people had a 
touch of the true greatness of Inman or Irving or 
W. G. Grace or General Booth ! With half-closed 
eyelids he stood waiting for his opponent — the crack 
player of the Club. Then he went to the table with 
something of the brilliant aplomb of the fire engine. 

The match began. Five hundred up. Fuller and 
fuller did Inman grow. Under the brilliant light 
one saw a ruddy, strained face, taut mouth, the eyes 
heavy. Whatever expression it held lay about the 
prominent eyebrows. For the rest one saw only a 
pair of arms and stout but sensitive hands. He 
moved round the table with quick short steps, un- 
gracefully; but clearly deportment didn't interest 
him. Otherwise, his feet would have been as lithe as 
his hands. 

It was an exhibition match, and he exhibited. He 
was showing-off, but it was gorgeous showing-off. 
He accomplished things that, I think, he would never 
have attempted in a match; impossible things, it 
seemed to me, against all the laws of angles. He 
seemed to be above those laws. He seemed to be 
master of the balls, and to send them about his busi- 
ness as he would. It was devilment — a white ball 
streaming across green cloth to go here, there, back, 



90 THE LONDON SPY 

across, at the lightest touch of the wizard's wand. 
It thrilled me as, I fancy, folk were thrilled by Paga- 
nini's devilish mastery of the fiddle. 

When, at some great burst of applause, he turned 
in acknowledgment, with what nice sense he did it. 
With what exquisite poise he assumed and twitched 
the native mantle of those courtiers. And how" de- 
liciously he missed and flummoxed, so that his op- 
ponent should have a chance at the table; and then 
retired to the shadow and sat motionless, eyes on 
the table, seeming to freeze the balls where they 
lay. 

Oh, pretty fellow! 

But that wasn't my only adventure in the streets 
of rich men. I have done other wonderful things. 
I have even lunched in Berkeley Square. Yes, I 
have. That in itself is an adventure, but at the lunch 
I made the acquaintance of Solomon, the pianist, and 
a secret fealty was sworn between us over a mutual 
delight in fried potatoes. 

Solomon is an arresting personality, and his taste 
for fried potatoes is not out of character, for he 
was born in London, well within the sound of Bow 
Bells, and belongs to several generations of London- 
ers. He is our only Cockney pianist. My first meet- 
ing with him in Berkeley Square left me with an 
impression of moonlight, and a desire to see him 
outside Berkeley Square in daylight. Since then we 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 91 

have had many talks and meetings, but the first im- 
pression remains. His dark head, the dark eyes 
flashing with sombre tints, like water at midnight, 
the dark colour, and the deep voice that seldom. rises 
above a murmur, all suggested night; but it is night 
lit by the clear high spirit of youth that hovers about 
him and is seen in the twinkling lips and in his atti- 
tudes and gestures. 

You have not been five minutes in his company 
before you discover that he has heights and depths. 
He is a wonder, and everybody wonders at him. I 
think he wonders at himself. He gives no sign of it, 
but his very seriousness implies a consciousness of 
gifts which must be carefully guarded and used only 
to the highest purpose. Many, no doubt, will re- 
member him as a little boy of ten, in the usual velvet 
suit of the prodigy — a tiny figure that could hardly 
be distinguished from the great piano on the great 
platform of that great Coliseum — the Albert Hall. 
He was eight years old when he first appeared as a 
soloist and people wondered then at the prodigious 
technique and temperament of this solemn elf. But 
at the age of twelve he disappeared, and it was as- 
sumed that he had gone the way of all prodigies, 
and would be heard of no more. 

They were wTong, and I think his appearances as 
an adult pianist have shown that he was no mere 
season's sensation. What happened was that a group 
of people recognised the boy's ability, and interested 



92 THE LONDON SPY 

themselves In his career; for Solomon was born with 
genius only, and the silver spoon was missing. They 
knew that if he were kept at work throughout adol- 
escence he would become stale, and his growing 
genius would be thwarted and perhaps killed. In 
1916, therefore, Percy Colson, the composer, formed 
a small committee of music-lovers, who made it their 
business to take him off the public platform and to 
control his musical education. The committee sent 
him to the Continent, and there he remained for six 
years studying under Duprey and Cortot; and he was 
not permitted to make a public appearance until his 
tutors and guardians were fully satisfied with him. 
?Cortot, himself a master, has hailed him as the com- 
ing master, and Is watching his first flight with In- 
terest. 

With all his temperament, which he reserves ex- 
clusively for his work, and with all his devotion to 
his work, he Is a happy human boy. He is still 
"Solomon." He was born with another name, but he 
wishes to be known only by his first name. He is still 
in his 'teens, and loves all the things that most ap- 
peal to that age. Next to his piano he loves his 
push-bike; and two great delights are the Palladium 
music-hall and fried potatoes. If he is not in the 
mood, you cannot get him to talk of music, or of his 
new feelings about a hackneyed passage of Schumann 
or Brahms; but he will talk for half an hour of 
Harry Weldon, Billy Merson, and Charles Austin; 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 93 

and when you would have him at the piano, he will 
offer you a dish of fried potatoes. 

Restful and serene in manner, he arrests attention 
at first glance. Although quiet and reticent, he has 
not a trace of the morbidity that sometimes goes 
with youthful genius. "He has eyes of youth; he 
speaks April and May." 

It is my fervent hope that he will not fall, as so 
many musicians do fall, into those places that are as 
the plague to the artist, and quickly destroy him. I 
mean society drawing-rooms and the streets of rich 
men. But I think he has too deep and Heinesque a 
sense of humour to permit himself to be lionised. 
I think that where another might be found at Lady 
DInkum's reception, Solomon will be found in the 
grand circle at the Palladium, or buying bananas in 
Little Newport Street, or eating fried potatoes at a 
street corner. 

There is in the West End little character of the 
sort one finds in the humbler streets; no downright, 
deeply-lined, tv/isted, bitten-in character. The people 
who live in these parts are trained to keep in check 
any little idiosyncrasies that mark them from their 
fellows, and the side-streets of Piccadilly offer noth- 
ing of fantasy or flamboyance. But here and there, 
among the workers of these side-streets, you do hap- 
•pen upon whimsical water-colour character, laid, as 
it were, upon superfine deckle-edged paper; and in 



94. THE LONDON SPY 

the old mews of Mayfair many hard-up people have 
found lodging. These mews, which once sheltered 
the horses, carriages, and grooms of the rich, are 
useless as garages, and some of them have lately 
been converted into dwellings and studios. In Apple 
Tree Yard lives William Nicholson, and W. H. 
Davies, the poet, has renounced the broad highways 
of the country for an elegant postal address. You 
will find him In a true poet's garret off Brook Street, 
and you will meet him most mornings In Bond Street, 
and will wonder what he is doing there, among ele- 
gant men and their groomed trollops. The cuckoo 
has been heard in Hyde Park; people have written 
to the papers about It; but the thrush In Bond Street 
Is a matter more marvellous and serious. Had 
Davies settled In Runcorn or Oldham or Ashton-in- 
Makerfield, the news would have saddened us but 
not perplexed us. But Davies In Bond Street is 
Wrong, as Wrong as a Bond Street lady in the cow- 
shed. Yet It Is pleasant to meet him there; to find 
one touch of true grace In this vapid street. He 
plods along with stick and pipe, a short figure, with 
face upturned, always upturned, the large brown 
eyes settled serenely upon things more durable than 
gold-tipped cigarettes and handbags. He brings to 
this street of Ignoble dignities a breath of old 
brotherhood with the simplicities. He sends a note 
of Mozartlan song across this musical-comedy stage. 
More In the key of the West End Is friend Bot- 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 95 

torn (old B.) of Duke Street. He was once a news- 
agent, but is now a tobacconist in town and a farmer 
in Essex. He is a Midsummer Night's Dream Child. 
He is a sort of brother to Davy Stephens of Dublin. 
He respects nobody and his attitude is fully licensed. 
When he was a newsagent he wrote his own news- 
bills, facetiously. In chalk, on two large slates hung 
outside his shops. Each bill dug into the private life 
of some local friend or celebrity. Thus: 

SCENE IN PICCADILLY 
DR. DUSTIN BACKS A WINNER 



CRISIS IN THE WEST 
MR. ELLIS GOES HOME EARLY 



THE SECOND ADVENT 
MR. CHAPLIN ARRIVES AT THE RITZ 

On any morning walk about Piccadilly, you are 
sure to meet Bottom, and his airy salutation will 
brighten the worst of days — and wet days are more 
disheartening in Piccadilly than in any other street. 
But for a lesson in heartiness and uplift, you should 
make the acquaintance of Mr. Proops. He is most 
useful on those days when you have no money and 
no hope. He won't lend you any money, but he will 
send you away with the sense that the year's at the 
Spring and all's right with the world. You are stroll- 



96 THE LONDON SPY 

ing aimlessly along that section of Piccadilly where 
are Hatchard's, Fortnum and Mason's, Hatchett's, 
Sotheran's, Bond Street, and the Ritz. Suddenly, 
somebody stops, head thrown back in surprise and 
gratification. A hand shoots towards you. 

"Ha ! Well, well, well. Let me shake you by 
the hand, my good and honest friend. The first true 
man I have seen this week. Does the world wag its 
tail at you? In other words, good brother, did you 
back All Over yesterday, or not? No? Well, well, 
well!" 

Proops is a sort of Bardolph, strutting always, 
whether he is in funds or without a bean. He wears 
his panache for the world's amusement, and he can 
approach you with the air of lending you money, and 
leave you his creditor. Only the West End produces 
that kind of men. 

The figure I most like to meet in the West is a 
figure that is only to be seen during the London sea- 
son; the figure of Frank Crowninshield, editor of 
New York's debonair monthly "Vanity Fair." The 
post fits him. The casual reader of the magazine, 
visualising idly its editor, would visualise just such a 
personality as Frank Crowninshield. One would 
say that he was created by Mr. Beerbohrrt. His rich, 
yet delicate character belongs to the deckle-edged 
pages of Max. Gay, disarmingly cynical, yet impul- 
sive and warm as the South, and as piquant as the 
South-east, he baEles the interpreter. And I have a 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 97 

fancy that he means to baffle you. That is the way 
of the decorative character; he decorates so that the 
common people shall not invade and disturb the true 
self. Crowninshield is wholly modern, but he im- 
poses upon his modernity the dash and charm of the 
cavalier which glitter in his very name. He loves 
the arts and the graces, but I think he loves life 
more. Wherever the movement is, there is Crown- 
inshield. He lights up his circle and sets it flaming 
and flickering, while he himself remains serene and 
steady. He rides on the whirlwind and directs the 
storm. That is the secret of the good Prime Minis- 
ter and the good editor. Crowninshield has it in large 
measure. It is difBcult to decorate a rococo street 
like Piccadilly, but Crowninshield does decorate it 
— and stimulate it. His tall swaying figure, his 
manner, his smile, and his delight at seeing you out 
of all London's millions, at once hearten and soothe 
your nerves. He is champagne and cigar in one. 
One of my adventures into the streets of rich men 
stands out very clearly. This was a visit to Clar- 
idge's. Claridge's is the hotel of the Complete Rich. 
It is a sort of semi-public Athenaeum — serene, aloof, 
exclusive. There is little movement in its main hall; 
none of the diligent or subdued bustle of other 
hotels. Everything goes on wheels, and the wheels 
are cased in velvet. I imagine it Is something like 
the reception rooms of Buckingham Palace. Cer- 
tainly it is full of traps for the inexperienced. The 



98 THE LONDON SPY 

worst trap of all lies in this — there are no uniforms 
at Claridge's; and if you don't know that (I didn't) 
you may easily blister your self-respect for your 
whole week. For fifteen minutes 1 hung about that 
hall in the company of agreeable and apparently idle 
young gentlemen in elegant morning dress, before 
one of them rescued me and showed me to the lift. 
Even if you know that these young gentlemen are 
attendants, there's always the risk of addressing the 
one who isn't (these foreign princes who stay at 
Claridge's are not always dressed by Savile Row). 
You have to take your chance, as, at Madame Tus- 
saud's, you offer your sixpence to the programme 
girl, and take your chance whether she's a dummy. 
Happily I got through without any bloomers, and 
was shown to the guest I had gone to see — Mr. 
Isidore de Lara. Here is another deckle-edged 
figure. His figure is short, but it carries a head of 
the kind called leonine, with an ample iron-grey mane. 
His suave and genial manner suits the head. He 
has the English repose, but one is sensible now and 
then of a dash of the Latin. It leaps from his eyes 
and from the quick inflections of the voice. Why 
the composer of "Messaline" should have chosen to 
set a rag-tag London song of mine, I don't know. 
But he had so chosen, and I went to Claridge's to 
hear his setting tried over. I have suggested the at- 
mosphere of Claridge's. I now give you the first 



verse of that song: 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 99 

He was a bad glad sailor-man. 

Tan-tan-ta-ran-tan-tare-o ! 
You never could find a haler man. 

Tan-tan-ta-ran-tan-tare ! 
All human wickedness he knew 
From Milwall Docks to Pi-chi-lu. 
He loved all things that make us gay — 
He'd spit his juice ten yards away, 

And roundly he'd declare — o! 
"It isn't so much that I want yer beer 
As yer bloody good company ! 

Whrow-ow-Whrow ! 
Bloody good companee! 
Wow! 

And now, please, imagine a pink-and-white bed- 
room at Claridge's; Isidore de Lara, grey and bland, 
at the piano, myself standing over him; and the two 
of us shouting that song, with gusto on the "Wows" 
and the epithet. . . . Four times that song rang 
through the green velvet corridors. Four times did 
sacrilege persist. Princes, diplomats, runaway prin- 
cesses, exiled monarchs, financiers, courtiers, 
and other truly great folk have sought refuge at 
Claridge's, appreciating its chaste solitude and re- 
pose. I like to think that I was in part responsible 
for what I may call the Rape of Claridge's. 
Whether Mr. de Lara heard about it afterwards, I 
don't know. Probably not. Claridge's, I thinks 
would have difficulty in framing a complaint against 
such disorder. There are some things, you 



100 THE LONDON SPY 

know . . . Well, what could Buckingham Palace do 
if somebody got Sam Mayo to give one of his songs 
at a Drawing Room? 

A year ago come Valentine's Day I was taken, for 
the first time, to see one of the sights of London. 
I was taken to the House of Commons. The House 
is one of those places to which the Cockney never 
goes. Others are the Tower, St. Paul's, the British 
Museum, Mme. Tussaud's, the National Gallery, 
the Abbey, and the Crystal Palace. I wouldn't have 
gone then, but for a wet night. But in the middle 
of a fair afternoon rain came down a little too 
heavily for comfort, and as neither Monk nor I 
had money for theatres, cinemas, restaurants or 
other public shelters. Monk said "Let's go to the 
House. I can always get in there." 

So we went to the House, I with a sense of high 
adventure. Everything Once is my motto. I was 
going to note the very heart-throbs of this England 
of ours. I was going to see for the first time the 
Mother of all Parliaments. I was going to see 
mighty minds in labour, and to assist in the bringing- 
forth of world-ideas. I was going to see the essence 
of my country, to gaze upon those few, chosen from 
the millions of our populace, who mould a mighty 
state's decrees and shape the whisper of a throne. 
I was going to . . . 

Then Monk said, "sh!" and J subdued myself to 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 101 

the tone proper to such an occasion. Might, ma- 
jesty, dominion and power were to be manifested, I 
entered the halls with the suitable mien and gait, 
something between the style of a bishop at the altar 
and a Cabinet Minister kissing hands. I stepped 
reverently yet sturdily. I doffed my hat. I saluted 
the soul of England with head erect. I entered the 
House of Commons. 

And all my soul-preparation was wasted. I need 
not have gone through these motions at all. I had 
thought I was attending a Council of the Elders of 
the Greatest Nation of the Earth. Nothing like it. 
I was actually attending the Greatest Show on Earth. 
Many theatrical and circus-managers have made that 
extravagant claim for their shows, but there's only 
one proof of it, and that Is the queue at the box- 
office. And the House of Commons has them all 
beaten. Weather and circumstances, hard times, 
good times, serious times, trivial times, good turns, 
bad turns, — these make no difference to the ticket- 
office of the House. Theatres and cinemas may com- 
plain of the slump, and assign varying causes to it, — 
the times, the fine weather, the increasing critical 
faculty of the public — but the House is untouched 
by these things. Matinee or evening, always there's 
a queue lined up In the lobby; and if you get there 
a few minutes after time, the House is full, and you 
have to wait your turn. When the theatres and 



102 THE LONDON SPY 

cinemas can't fill one-tenth of their seats, the House 
is turning people away nightly. 

And the crowd is justified. The House puts up a 
good show. It is the best variety house in the coun- 
try, and, like the police court, it is free. Even its 
dud turns don't empty the seats. They may empty 
the Members' benches, but the public eat up every 
bit of the show, and find it all good; and when the 
Hon. Member for Mutton-in-the-Marsh rises to 
promote a bill for the provision of tramways at Mut- 
ton, the gallery crowd leans a bit further over the 
rail and settles down. "Sh ! This is going to be 
good !" Talk about "Chu Chin Chow" and its record 
run. Here's a show that has been playing for cen- 
turies and still draws a full house. 

We were received in the outer hall by a policeman. 
He passed us on to another policeman, who showed 
us to another policeman, who told us to sit down. 
I had never seen so many policemen in any East End 
highway as here. After a wait of some minutes In 
the picture-gallery we were beckoned forward and 
taken through the Lobby and upstairs. Here at the 
top of the stairs sat a personage in evening dress, 
decorated with a medal, whether for regular at- 
tendance or general proficiency, I could not tell. 
Before him was a mighty book, in which he bade us 
write our names. Then still more policemen ushered 
us to the gallery, and there before me I saw the 
Great Assembly in full business. 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 103 

I found myself in a chamber of ecclesiastical type, 
without windows or lighting fixtures, lighted artifi- 
cially from the top. The air was musty, like church 
or theatre air, and the atmosphere of hush that held 
the gallery made me tread lightly as one entering 
during the psalms or after the curtain is up. The 
seats in the gallery are of that hard wood which 
serves for church pews. The House was full, and 
I looked down upon a hundred bald heads, which 
bobbed up and down like little balloons. Fat men 
wandered in. Fat men wandered out. Fat men went 
to sleep. And over all was bzz-bzz, burble-burble, 
broken now and then by a broad murmur. "Yoah- 
hoah-hoah!" At once my mind went back to my 
first play — "The Sign of the Cross." It was just the 
noise of the roaring of the lions "off" by hungry 
supers; but here, I was told, it signified approval, 
not hunger or challenge. Then I looked about me. 

Centre of all sat, on a sort of throne, an imposing 
Personage in wig and gov/n. Before him, at a table, 
sat three gentlemen in less elaborate wigs, and at 
either side of him, assisting the theatre-illusion, 
stood two elegant figures in evening dress, as Corn- 
mere and Compere stand at either side of the stage 
in revue. I had expected the Mother of all Parlia- 
ments to show an example of the highest in all things, 
but, except in the fun, I was disappointed. The 
crowd was a crowd of ordinary people, ill-dressed 
but well-fed; just the kind of people one goes home 



104 THE LONDON SPY 

with in the tram or the bus ; only fatter. The clothes, 
style, and speech were all provincial, and the atmo- 
sphere was provincial, full of the tun-bellied John 
Bullishness of the cartoons. I had imagined it to be 
charged nightly with dignity, passion, rivalry, scorn, 
rancour and indignation. I found that its tone was 
more casual than the tone of the Wandsworth Bor- 
ough Council, and the whole proceedings were taken 
with a note of levity that is too seldom found in our 
theatres. It was an assembly of bland heads, bland 
voices and bland philosophy; of inept creatures hon- 
estly doing their best to serve their fellows. And 
above them, in the Press Gallery, the gods laughed. 

The bewigged gentleman in the high chair seemed 
at first to have some air of solemnity, of inflexible 
purpose and austerity; but when he raised his head, 
one saw the face of an ordinary man thoroughly en- 
joying himself. His eyes twinkled at the pert re- 
plies of ministers or the impertinent interjections of 
refractory Members; and he joined with shaking 
shoulders in the laughter that greeted the funny bits 
of the star turns. Clearly he enjoyed it as much as 
I did; yet he saw it every night. Anyway, his is an 
amusing job; for it is his nod and beck that sets 
those little balloons dancing up and down. It was 
question time when we entered, and the fun was kept 
up by both sides. 

The gentleman in the wig called upon "Hon'ble 
Member for Mutton." 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 105 

Bald head rises: "Number eighty-four to Minister 
for health." 

Gentleman with bald head and hook nose gets up. 
"Nyah, nyah." 

Another bald head. "Mis'r Sp'kr, sir, arising out 
of that answer — " 

"Order, order!" 

Again like a show, all the points of this question- 
and-answer business are pre-arranged. I had thought, 
like the child at the variety show, that the varieties 
just happened. But it isn't so. Questions are writ- 
ten down and printed on the Order paper, and 
sent to Cabinet Ministers, who send them to their 
departments. The departments write replies and 
give them to the Cabinet Minister. Question and 
answer are printed and circulated in the daily issue 
of Hansard. Yet every day hon. Members make 
these questions verbally In the House, and Cabinet 
Ministers answer them verbally. There is nothing 
haphazard here. All is rehearsed and calculated. 
There are no spontaneous speeches, no unrehearsed 
"scenes." . . . All speeches are really lectures, read- 
ings of "papers," and all the movements of debate 
are like the movements of a ballet — only less pas- 
sionate. 

After question-time there came an interval, and 
half the Members trooped out. The gentleman in 
the wig rose and announced the next item, and called 
upon the hon. Member for Trumpington. I had 



106 THE LONDON SPY 

heard about him. He was always speaking some- 
where and getting into the papers with httle aphor- 
isms in those columns headed Wise Words of the 
Week. Decidedly a son of Anak. Then he stood 
up — a little fellow, with baggy trousers, mottled 
face, wandering eye, and butcher's stomach. I had 
read some of his speeches, and they read well. Now 
I was granted the spectacle of fretting pomp in its 
natural state. It was difficult to believe that the man 
was serious. It was difficult to believe that this 
was not some cunning revue actor giving an impres- 
sion of a solemn ass. I had thought in my innocence, 
though I ought to have known better, that the 
speeches I read were delivered as they were printed 
— -hot from the heart, clear-cut, sentence following 
sentence, smooth and straight. One reads something 
like this : 

"When people ask us to see signs of failure in the present 
association of parties, I absolutelj^ challenge the statement 
that has been made of failure. The man is mad who would 
say that any Minister of the Government would not lay aside 
his burden with a sigh of relief. Is there any man who 
would say that any member of the Government, for his own 
enjoyment, ambition, or emolument, is desirous of clinging 
to office and dealing with such problems as Ireland, Egj^pt, 
India, the financial situation and the spectre of 2,000,000 
men idle in our streets?" 

This is how it is done. "Mis'r Sp'kr, sir — (jerk 
at coat) . When people ask us ( glance round House ) 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 107 

ask us to see signs of failure (prrhm!) in the pres- 
ent association of parties (snuffle) I absolutely — er 
— absolutely challenge the statement that has been 
made (prrhm!) of failure. (Pause.) I say that 
that man is mad — er — mad, who would say (busi- 
ness with waistcoat button) that any Member of the 
Government would not (fumble among papers) 
would not lay aside his burden with a sigh of relief. 
Of relief. Is there any man — any man — who would 
say (fumble)" and so on. 

When he had finished, another bald head got up, 
and talked copy-book maxims to twenty other men 
who were not listening. Weary platitudes splashed 
and pattered into the thick khaki light. It is a light 
that withers all inspiration. Men could not talk like 
that under spring sunshine. Even my friend Mr. 
Gore and his collateral branches who make up the 
majority of the House are sane in the sun. 

Mr. Gore, if you don't know him, is the fount of 
all wisdom, the maker of all proverbs, the progeni- 
tor of all platitudes. Out of his mouth proceeds 
dessicated truth. It was he, I am sure, who wrote 
those gemmy aphorisms that disfigured Vere Foster's 
Copy-books in my young days. He is as didactic as 
Euclid; and as right — damn him. It is his observant 
and ruminant mind that notes that a bird in the hand 
is worth two in the bush; and tells you so. He dis- 
covers each morning some new truth; as that money 
doesn't bring happiness; that his dog is wonderfully 



108 THE LONDON SPY 

intelligent; that you can have too much of a good 
thing; that it's a funny world; that the Pacific Ocean 
is very wide; that wonders never cease; that South 
Sea Islands are lonely places, that the evenings are 
drawing in, and that we shall soon have Christmas 
here. But where Euclid, when he said a thing, said 
it once and left it, Mr, Gore reiterates incessantly. 
What he discovered on Monday he discovers anew 
on Thursday. He does not, like most of us who 
repeat platitudes, employ the disclaiming "Well, 
they say that . . ." as a prelude to his pronounce- 
ments. He claims them as his own with "I 
was thinking this morning . . ." or "I always 
think . . ." 

He lies in bed at night and early morning think- 
ing, thinking, happening at times upon the golden 
thought for the day, which he forthwith proclaims 
wherever he goes. And he goes everywhere. You 
will meet him in the Strand, in the suburbs, in the 
East End, in the Tube, at Mayfair dinner tables, in 
the pleasure-resorts, in Egypt, Algiers, Morocco, 
Italy, the Norwegian Fiords, on all the cross-Atlan- 
tic and P. & O. liners, among the rich, among the 
poor, in first and third-class railway carriages, at 
Monte Carlo, at Vestry Meetings, and certainly in 
the House of Commons. And wherever you find 
him, he will be disseminating the results of his mid- 
night cogitations. Wherever you hear his voice 
saying "it always seems to me . . ." fly from him, 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 109 

even if you are his guest at dinner; for that means 
that he is about to read Vere Foster's copy-books 
aloud. But fly where you will, he is certain to find 
you at last. When I made my first trip abroad to 
France, to a small town in the department of Eure, 
sure enough he was there. I alighted at a wayside 
station in that department, and he was on the plat- 
form, with a woman — probably Mrs. Gore. He 
was nursing a dog, and the first words I heard in 
my first foreign town were not French dialect but 
Vere Foster's English. 

"Ah," stroking the dog and sighing; "ah, I don't 
suppose we shall ever have another Landseer." 

Mr. Gore takes his tastes and his hobbies seri- 
ously. He is no mere enthusiast; he is a zealot. He 
does not, like the rest of us, follow a recreation for 
fun; he "believes in it." He believes In starting the 
day with a good breakfast. He believes in fresh 
air. He believes in outdoor exercise. He does not 
take cold baths because he enjoys them but because 
he believes in them. His faith in material manifes- 
tations is large and complete. He may be spiritually 
a sceptic but he has a simple faith in the efficacy of 
flannel next the skin, of hot rum for colds, of read- 
ing as a means of self-improvement, of attending 
dinners as a means of social advancement. Joy is 
absent from him. All those grand foolish moments 
which are to others life itself he suffers in the cause 
of the faith. Where others accept and rejoice, he 



110 THE LONDON SPY 

believes. He believes in India and Ireland and 
Christmas. A festive season is to him a service to 
be attended, an office of his much too common 
prayer-book. 

The House of Commons is his heart's true home; 
but while in small intimate doses he is an irritation, 
in the mass he is a stimulant, an insane entertain- 
ment. His turn alone makes the House a rival to 
other houses. 

"Now, sir, we have been passing through serious 
times; but though the road uphill is hard, when we 
reach the top we see the first faint streaks of the 
dawn." (Hear-hear, Hear-hear.) 

"And now, sir, I have nothing to add but this; 
if we face our opponents singly, we shall be defeated. 
Let us show them a united front; for — union is 
Strength." (Hear-hear, Hear-hear, Hear-hear!) 

"And I venture to say, sir, that nobody but a 
Socialist would advocate the control of capital." 
(Hear-hear, Hear-hear.) 

And so the flummery went on; and I was reminded 
more and more of the business that I had seen in 
"African Villages" at Earl's Court and other exhibi- 
tions; native pow-pows and war-councils. I once 
thought that Gilbert's "Mikado" poked fun at 
Japanese court ceremonial, but I see now that he 
was more subtle; his satire was really directed at 
English parliamentary ceremonial. All the hirelings 
of the House have their own resounding titles of bar- 



IN THE STREETS OF RICH MEN 111 

baric tone — Black Rod, Serjeant-at-Arms, and so on. 
We send colonists and missionaries to Africa, and 
do our best to stamp out the rites and ceremonies of 
the natives, their beads and coloured glass and 
enemies' teeth and skulls, while all the time the 
war-paint, the foolish head-dress, the incantation 
and voodoo business continue in our own councils. 
And I am all for their survival both in the South 
Seas and in Westminster. For we all love flummery 
and mumbo-jumbo. That is why we go to the theatre 
and the Lord Mayor's Show and Royal Weddings. 
That is why the House is such a draw. I regret my 
shillings spent on those "African Villages," and I 
think Mr. Kiralfy might have told me that I could 
see the same thing for nothing. 

Then things began to move a bit. Everybody 
went out — in a slow-moving bunch: a parade of 
wooden soldiers. For some minutes the House was 
empty. Then they all came back, and there were 
smiles and murmurs and growls. Then the man In 
the wig rose and said something, and immediately a 
little man with bobbed hair got up, and there were 
gentle roars of "Yoah-yoah-yoah!" Clearly Big- 
Man-of-Wigwam was about to speak. He spoke. 
Quietly and slowly at first. Then it seemed he Got 
Nasty; and while some murmured "Yoah-yoah!" 
others, a large number, growled. That roused him. 
He turned about and snapped at them. His bobbed 
hair bobbed up and down. He yoicked. He hwiled. 



112 THE LONDON SPY 

He waved his little arms about. He brought a hand 
down with a smack on the table. He pointed a 
finger at a man opposite, a knife-faced man with 
simian eye-brows, and told him, with an air of blast- 
ing him where he sat, that his conduct was un-Eng- 
lish. The other didn't seem at all dismayed. Big 
Man went on, getting more and more angry. At 
any moment, I felt, he would vault that table and 
cross-buttock the sneerer. He dropped his Big- 
Man manner, and gave a perfect imitation of school- 
boy temper; no grand remonstrance, but a petty 
snarling and yapping. This set the others at it. 
They called each other names. They turned round 
to each other like boys when the master's out of the 
room. They jeered, derided, gestured and "Or- 
der !"-ed each other. They gave a display that would 
not be tolerated for a moment at the Muswell Hill 
Debating Society. But they gave us our money's 
worth. It was the British mob-spirit made manifest. 

Then, as it began, it stopped. Big-Man simmered 
down, flourished a few more phrases, and subsided 
amid Yoah-yoahs from the faithful. 

Other little men bobbed up, but only one was al- 
lowed to remain standing. The others sat down, 
while he addressed the House. When he sat down, 
the disappointed ones bobbed up again. No luck. 
Down they sat again. Fat men wandered in. Fat 
men wandered out. Fat men went to sleep. 

And over all was bzz-bzz — burble-burble. 



—IV— 
IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 

MY tenement days belong to Spltalfields, and I 
have a deep affection for Spitalfields. It is 
a queer corner. It has not one note, but many. Its 
main street is Commercial Street, a lane of angry 
architecture. It mixes industry with vagrancy. It 
is a land of warehouses and doss-houses and Dwell- 
ings. It has a vegetable market and a gravely beau- 
tiful church, and it is over-shadowed by a great 
Goods Station and its many arches; these things en- 
due it with a baffling quality of charm. Its nights 
are dim and its days strenuous, but it wants passion. 
Just as the reclaimed criminal is usually a vapid, 
aimless creature, so Spitalfields, once hot and bright 
with wickedness, is now pallid and lethargic. It has 
the dim melancholy of Russian cigarettes. Its only 
noise and movement come from the Jews lounging at 
the corners, for this ardent race even lounges vi- 
vaciously. 

But if it is not what it was, it still holds in its 
streets much of wistful interest; and Coverley Fields, 
Fashion Street, Flower and Dean Street, the Tenters, 
Weaver Street, and the faint-smelling Slavonic shops 
up the alleys still send us whiffs of sad enchantment. 

113 



114 THE LONDON SPY 

For here are gathered colonies of the strangely as- 
sorted races of the Balkans — Poles, Lithuanians, 
Czecho-Slovakians, Albanians, Georgians, Serbs, 
Roumanians, Esthonians; many of them refugees of 
1 9 14 who have settled here, and are quite comforta- 
ble; yet fill the air with exiles' yearn. For them the 
shops are filled with strange merchandise, and for 
them the horseflesh butchers trade, and the bakers 
make the queer-shaped bread. 

But my tenement stands above and outside this 
exotic influence, and is wholly English; and in penur- 
ious days I had good times there with other tenants. 
It is a hideous aliair to look upon. It is of the Pea- 
body school of architecture — a school that has many 
followers. Its chief lesson is the elimination of 
beauty. These buildings are for the poor; there- 
fore, they need only be serviceable; and their build- 
ers spend a thousand pounds upon rough utility and 
begrudge tuppence for beauty. Look upon our 
Elementary Schools, our Public Baths, our work- 
houses, our orphanages, our infirmaries, our "dwell- 
ings," and compare them with the dignity of our 
stores and banks and business offices. They are 
sores on the face of London. The lives of the poor 
are ugly enough by circumstance; their benefactors 
seem determined to keep them bound in ugliness. 

But the tenement folk manage, somehow, to tri- 
umph over the ugliness of Peabody, and to soften 
its crude angles by kindliness and self-help. I don't 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 115 

know how it is, but tenement families are much more 
agreeable than next-door neighbours of houses or 
flat. The tenement, indeed, is one big house, except 
— there is an "except" in every tenement — except 
for "that stuck-up thing," Miss Simpkins on the 
third floor, who makes a passion of reserve, and 
won't joint in any of the occasions. 

You may live twelve months in a mansion flat, and 
know nothing of your fellow-tenants, or they of you; 
but in a tenement the social atmosphere is more cor- 
dial; you are expected to be "neighbourly." On your 
arrival you are the new boy or the new girl at school, 
or the new member, and you are to be looked over, 
and to give an account of yourself and to be reported 
upon; so that, if you are passed, you may be made 
free of the tenement society. Ours was one happy 
family. We were as self-contained and as self-sup- 
porting as Queen Anne's Mansions. We had not a 
restaurant, but we had a tailor, a cobbler, a medical 
student, a char-lady who "did" for the students and 
did odd jobs for a few pence for harassed mothers; 
a good cook who for equally few pence would cook 
a family dinner, a newsboy, a Salvation Army lass 
for spiritual consolation and a caretaker who made 
a book on all the Important races. There were by- 
laws, of course, — no music or singing] after ten 
o'clock, no disorder (a most elastic term) and no 
nuisances. But we didn't need those rules; give-and 
take was part of our nature. 



116 THE LONDON SPY 

You live as much In others' rooms as in your own; 
and if it should become known that any tenant is 
hard-hit and short of a Sunday dinner, there's always 
a place for him at the tables of those who are, for the 
moment, flush. And there are delightful Christmas 
parties and Bank Holiday parties; and much chagrin 
if you go to Mrs. Jones' party and don't drop in at 
Mrs. Smith's party. To each floor of the tenement 
is given a balcony space where washing is hung dur- 
ing the day, where the old ladies sit on warm after- 
noons, and where youth lounges in the evening. 

Very pleasant are these lounglngs and the evening 
meetings of the young people. You stand on the 
fourth-floor balcony at twilight, between the dust 
and the stars, looking over the aching, muttering face 
of East London, and to you comes young Dolly, 
from No. 14b, to admire the "view." You lean to- 
gether across the iron balustrade, gazing at some- 
thing afar, and, somehow, it's the most natural thing 
in the world that your hand should find hers on the 
railing, and that she should return your squeeze, and 
say "Don't be silly — you are a one!" That you 
should pull her hair for her sauclness, and that she 
should give you a tender push, and that you should 
somehow fall against each other, and remain so, si- 
lent and still under the lucid night. And in the 
morning, if Dolly Is on the balcony brushing her hair, 
as you go off to work, isn't it natural, in that brisk 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 117 

light, that you should throw up a bunch of violets, 
and that she should throw you . . . 

There was the affair of Cissie and Dick Went- 
worth. 

Cissie lived on the fourth floor, sharing her rooms 
with a work-mate. Ivy. Cissie was a heart-smiter, 
proud and petulant. Cissie was neat and slim, with 
large roguish eyes, and held much grace in her slen- 
der limbs. Her coloured frocks were always pretty 
and her little hats provocative. There was joy in 
her movements, in the swing of her light green dress, 
in the set of her soft cotton blouse, and in the won- 
derful rhythmic fall of yellow hair from head to 
shoulders. Cissie and Dick met, casually, late one 
August night on the balcony seeking cool air. An 
August midnight meeting on a fourth-floor balcony, 
far above the hushed streets, is sure to work a potent 
spell upon young hearts. You seem lifted above and 
withdrawn from the world of stale fact. You are 
gloriously alone in the city, prince and princess look- 
ing across your dominion; and although only the 
night is listening, you whisper your talk. 

Well, Cissie and Dick stayed on the balcony that 
night till two o'clock, as you knew they would; and 
the next night they met again and Cissie spoke her 
surprise. 

"Oh — you? You seem to like this view." 

Next night he brought two chairs, and they stayed 
longer, and went to bed late and got up tired, and 



118 THE LONDON SPY 

had to run to work without breakfast. But they 
didn't grumble. Then, after a week of such nights, 
when London lay silent and prone with the heat, 
jewelled even In sleep, Dick took both her hands in 
his, and gently drew her from the railings back to 
the staircase. She hung back and tried to withdraw 
her hands. He held them tight, and pulled her close, 
and murmured, "Cissie! Cissie!" She dragged back 
with all her weight. He pulled her to the corridor 
leading to his room. 

"No ! No !" short and sharp. "Dick— no !" 

"Oh— Cissie!" 

"No — we mustn't!" And yet she spoke not too 
sharply, because the pain in his voice hurt her. 

"Dearest!" 

"No ! No. Let me go now. It's late. We 
mustn't — not to-night." 

But she smiled then, and he felt her smile through 
the darkness. 

"Not ever, dear?" 

"I don't know, Dick. Perhaps. . . ." 

"Don't you care for me at all, then?" 

"Oh, I do, my dear. But . . . not now. . . . 
Perhaps . . ." 

"Ah! When?" 

"Let me go first." 

He dropped her hands, and she turned towards 
her door. "Fll come to you, Dick, when — " 

"Yes, when?" 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 119 

"When the caretaker gets a new coat ! Ta-ta ! 
Happy dreams!" 

And away she flitted, and Dick returned to the 
balcony to lean over London and to swear and stamp 
and sob. Minx! Hussy! Faggot! Little devil! 

And he went no more to the balcony those hot 
nights, but mooned about the streets and drank too 
much beer, and went savagely to bed. Each morn- 
ing, as he went to work, he gave a keen but pessimis- 
tic glance at the caretaker's apparel. No hope there, 
he felt, for many months; the caretaker always wore 
his raiment to rags. Cissie, he knew, meant what 
she said, and would abide by It; and he was too 
proud to plead for extenuation. Much as the little 
golden head and April eyes of Cissie had entangled 
him, he had no patience with whims, and he wanted 
to tell her so, curtly, and dismiss her. But he 
couldn't. That smile of hers, the curious little up- 
ward twist of the left side of the mouth, had bemused 
him, and wouldn't let him. He could only go on 
wanting her. 

Once or twice he passed her on the landing, and 
she shot her best pert grimace at him, but he would 
not stop. He went straight on, and even when she 
cried lightly — "The old coat's nearly worn out now !" 
he wouldn't turn his head. If he had, he might have 
seen that her face was crimson and very serious. 
But next day they passed on the stairs, so closely 
that he had to brush against her; and when he had 



120 THE LONDON SPY 

gone up she stood on the ground floor, counting his 
footsteps and clenching her hands. There were 
tears in her eyes, and she remained still some min- 
utes; then her brow cleared, and she pattered up- 
stairs like a golden mouse. 

That evening Dick mooned about the streets, more 
at odds with himself than ever. He couldn't even 
drink beer. The close contact with Cissie on the 
stairs, just the whisper of her frock against his 
fingers, had thrilled him anew and awakened all the 
passion that he thought he had damped down. Sick 
of the streets, disgusted with himself, and disgusted 
with home, he yet turned towards home, and came 
slouching into the yard of the tenement. And, damn 
it, there was Cissie standing right where he must 
pass, at the caretaker's door, and — aha ! — with 
many old-age nods and smiles the old man was lavish- 
ing thanks upon Cissie for the present of a new coat. 

A splendid misanthrope, our caretaker. He glories 
in it, as fanatics glory in mortification of the flesh. 
He has a round heavy face, scarred with deep lines 
at each side of the nose, a drooping mouth, and a 
beard of nondescript colour, which is never trimmed 
or combed. His gait is elephantine. He walks to 
any point as though he did not want to walk to that 
point. Each foot is set down slowly and hesitantly, 
and its fellow follows it after consideration. He 
has a habit of looking over one shoulder, which is, 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 121 

as It were, the scowl of contempt that the defeated 
give to the world they cannot challenge. He stands 
at his ground-floor door most of the day, leaning 
against the side-post, hands tucked in the top of his 
trousers, glooming upon his boots, or Grr-Ing at the 
children as they come shouting down the stairs. 

Tell him It's a fine day — "Ah, but it'll be cold In 
the evening." Tell him old Jackson has got work 
at last after six weeks out — "Ah, that won't last 
long, though. No business about. They're putting 
'em off everywhere." Tell him you're glad to see 
he's looking better — "Ah, but I shall get it again 
when the damp weather comes." Tell, him that the 
pubs are to close at ten — "Grrr ! Taking away our 
liberties." Tell him that they're to keep open as- 
long as they like — "Wod's the good when we ain't 
got no money?" 

For life at large he has one brief blunt litany — 
"I dunno wod thingser comin' to." 

But withal a happy man, if serenity of mind and 
settled estate be happiness. 

But even he expands to one of our weddings. 
Our weddings are affairs. Everybody is invited, 
except that old thing on the third floor who won't 
join In anything. We all wear our Sunday clothes, 
and all the children dress in their best and crowd 
about the courtyard and the staircases, waiting for 
the great moment. Some are at the gate spying for 
the first approach of the cabs; others, within, bring 



122 THE LONDON SPY 

now and then reports of progress. "She's dressed ! 
I seen 'er. Oo, she do look lovely. And 'er muv- 
ver's crying, they say." Ordinary affairs are sus- 
pended; there is an atmosphere of expectancy. 
Work is neglected, and even the most hardened — 
like the caretaker — hang about to pick up bits of gos- 
sip. "They ought to be 'ere now — I 'ope nothing's 
'appened. Mrs. Minty'U never be ready. She ain't 
done 'er 'air yet. Don't seem to know where she is, 
like — all up in the air." Everybody sends a present, 
if only something towards the feast, or the "lend" 
of table appointments or extra chairs. 

And when they come back from the church — oo 
my! Then the yard glitters with confetti and the 
kids scream and the old 'uns yell, and the principals 
have to fight their way upstairs : and we get an organ 
into the yard to make music under the windows dur- 
ing the feast and for the dancing in the yard that al- 
ways follows. The bride, warm-cheeked and prop- 
erly shy, wears lavender and white; the bridegroom, 
with new lounge suit and white buttonhole, grins 
upon all. 

The sitting-room and kitchen have been "turned 
out" the week before. The table is covered with 
the best cloth, and the best spoons and forks, care- 
fully preserved these two years, in an old bit of 
wash-leather, are brought out from their nest, and 
the children are let in by twos and threes to view 
the table. Then, after orders and disputes as to 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 123 

where the guests shall sit, and a sort of impromptu 
game of musical chairs, they sit; and thereafter is 
rattle of knives and forks, clink of glasses and striv- 
ing voices. The front door is left open, and on 
the staircase stand groups of well-wishers looking 
on and crying salutations. Everybody talks at once, 
and looks after everybody else, pushing dishes about 
or passing them over the heads of intervening guests. 
"Sardines coming up, Uncle — I know you like 
'em." 

"Ah, me boy, you know me — eh?" 
"Let me give you a bit o' fat, Auntie." 
"Get those clean plates, Emmie. Come on, stir 
yesself." 

Then follows the kids' feast, and the crumbs from 
the table are fairly distributed among them. Then 
we adjourn to the yard, and dance, and tell stories, 
and the bottles are opened; and when they are spent 
the male guests retire down the street to the place 
at the corner, and come back and bring so much 
zest to the occasion, that the police interfere, gently 
suggesting that we've had quite enough of that, and 
it's time to ease up. Well, well, perhaps it is, but, 
after all we don't get married everyday, do we? 
And you were young yourself once. So we ease up, 
and then discover that the bride and bridegroom 
have disappeared; and the rest of the evening, until 
past midnight, is spent in looking-In at each other's 
rooms and discussing the affair. 



124 THE LONDON SPY 

Yes, altogether It went off very well. No hitches 
— nobody got "nasty" as they do sometimes on these 
occasions — even Uncle Fred found nothing to 
grumble at — and there was plenty of everything for 
everybody. Just a nice quiet affair. Everybody 
happy and no fuss. Oh, damn these rackety wed- 
dings. I can't stand 'em. And I must say that 
Mrs. MInty worked jolly hard to make everybody 
feel at home — wodder you say? 

And for the next few months, affairs are dated 
from "the wedding" — "jus' afore Minty's gel got 
married" — "You know — about a week after the 
Minty's 'do.' " 

Annie, our Salvation lady, was the character of the 
building. She had had a hard tim.e as a girl, but 
she carried no scars. The Salvation Army caught 
her young and effaced her troubles. At seventeen 
she worked In a cork factory in Hoxton, and her 
work was tedious toil. The mean round of her 
life afforded nothing of change, adventure, or warm 
amenity. It was a round of factory, home, bed; 
factory, home, bed. Beyond the crest of the hill of 
the day stretched the long desert of evening. Her 
work she could face — if not with active interest, at 
least with complacence. It was the evenings that 
so chilled and depressed her. 

Home meant a back-kitchen, a ponderous, alco- 
holic father and a querulous, complaining mother. 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 125 

Her father, when he was at home, didn't talk; he 
would come home heavily, go awkwardly to his 
chair, and sit there, drowsing and '* 'mp"-Ing to 
himself. Her mother's conversational repertory 
was too familiar. Annie's earliest memories of her 
mother were linked with phrases. She could tell 
the day and the occasion from the phrase. Mon- 
day's phrase, repeated from morn till eve, was "I 
shall never get through with this washing 'fore yer 
father comes 'ome." Wednesday: "There now. It's 
early closing, and we ain't got no tea." Every 
Wednesday, for years past, her mother had run out 
of tea. Saturday: "I 'ope yer father's 'ome soon 
or that stew'll be done to rags." Sunday: "I know 
that meat's tough." And every day, about noon: 
"I don't seem able to get on at all to-day." 

Annie knew always what her mother would say 
upon any given topic, and knew that It was not 
worth saying. But she had to sit and listen to It. 
For reading she cared nothing, and to sitting glumly 
at home, listening to the solo of nothingness, there 
was no alternative but a saunter along the Monkeys' 
Parade. This was even less agreeable, for she 
had never been able to get a boy — her face and 
figure were not of the bold, immediate appeal that 
attracts youth — and the sight of other girls with 
boys was an exasperation. Never did her ears burn 
to the mutter of the strollers — "Nice bit, ain't she? 
Wouldn't mind 'aving 'er f'r a week-end — eh?" 



126 THE LONDON SPY 

She belonged to her environment, yet was filled with 
discontent. Her language was something more than 
coarse. Her habits were offensive. Her ways were 
graceless and unbeguiling. But she was hungry for 
change and adventure. Had a boy on Jamaica-road 
seized her, she v/ould have given whatever he asked. 

But one Sunday evening she stopped at a street 
corner to snatch some solitary amusement from a 
Salvation Army meeting. A young woman, of in- 
determinate age, was speaking, and suddenly Annie 
was caught. She hardly followed the message, 
which was crude and obvious, delivered in a pierc- 
ing street-corner falsetto. What held her was tHe 
colour and the glory and the fervour of the woman's 
face; and when the eyes rested on her, and flung 
her a share of their ardour, she too suffered a thrill 
of exaltation. 

As she stood, transfixed, a boy pulled her hair. 
She turned. "What a face!" The boy passed on, 
and Annie turned again to the half-circle of tense 
eyes. Abandoned joy was here, expressed as fluently 
as Bank Holiday emotions in the parks. She had 
never been able to join the Bank Holiday crowds — 
they did not want outsiders; but this woman seemed 
to be inviting her to kick her heels with them and 
have a good time, singing, "Glory! Glory! Glory!" 
with a bang of the drum and a frivolous clangour 
of the tambourines. With magnificent abasement 
these people called themselves sinners, and sang^ 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 127 

and shouted about their sinfulness, and laughed 
happily in speaking of the Great Friend who had 
redeemed them. They praised God in a dozen dif- 
ferent ways. They bawled. They bellowed. They 
brayed. They piped. They chuckled. They yelped. 
They intoned. They roared. Happy, happy chil- 
dren of sin! Oh, glory, glory! 

When the meeting broke up she slid shyly to the 
speaker. The woman listened to her halting sen- 
tences, and seemed to understand. They took her to 
the Citadel. She was questioned closely by the 
captain, and was told to call again during the week. 
She called, and went with them to an open-air meet- 
ing. She sang "Glory, Glory!" and thrilled to her 
own voice. But this was not enough. She pressed 
them to accept her, and finally, after pointing out the 
hardships that she might have to face, and trying, 
by searching questions, to discover whether she really 
desired to serve Jesus and was ready to suffer in 
the cause, they accepted her. 

On the religious point she dissembled, and told 
more than the truth. Of religion she knew only 
what she had been taught at school; and she knew 
the Gospels only as she knew the rivers of England 
and the points of the Pennine Chain. Faith and 
doubt and soul-searching had little appeal for her. 
The harassing scramble for the day's bread, the 
bruising workaday round, left little energy for the 
spiritual life. She wanted to join them; their ob- 



128 THE LONDON SPY 

ject hardly interested her. Indeed, she could not 
have told you what the Salvation Army was for; she 
only saw it as a happy band of brothers and sisters, 
working joyfully for the Lord as others worked, less 
joyfully, for the Borough Council. 

But with all her heart she did what she was told 
to do. Here at last was adventure. Working for 
the Lord was more exciting than making corks. 
Here was something upon which she could direct 
her store of energy and service to interesting pur- 
pose; something to live for; a career. So she be- 
came a probationer, and was put to laborious tasks 
— scrubbing, washing, selling the "War Cry" in pub- 
lic-houses, going out at night, with others, to lead 
broken women to the Shelter. This, to test the 
depth of her enthusiasm. 

She came through it. Her factory mates called 
"Sally!" to her in the street; but she was done with 
them. And slowly, imperceptibly, the romance and 
adventure changed into a quiet, filling rapture. She 
awakened to the faith that was in her companions, 
and it grew within her. Without thought or self- 
searching, she came to share their complete trust 
in goodness, and to find a daily beauty in the world 
and a delight in her work. She rose slowly but 
steadily from the ranks. 

She is now a leader in her section. She might 
have been married to a young man of her factory and 
lived a fretful housekeeping life, desiring more than 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 129 

her means afforded. She might have gone with the 
boys, and be now on the streets. She might be toil- 
ing still in the factory. Instead, though she is still 
called "Sally!" she has everything that she wants; 
she has achieved complete happiness. Go to Great 
Eastern Street one Sunday night, and you will see 
in her face something that few of us possess. . . . 

But we were not always happy. We had our oc- 
casional "cases" and "bad lots." Not so very bad, 
though. I had much sympathy with Mrs. Green's 
Edie. I'm sure she wasn't a bad girl at the start; 
but Edie once abstracted a blouse from a stall in 
Brick Lane, and was prosecuted. The magistrate 
didn't call it kleptomania or "megrims." Edie had 
no medical expert to bring testimony that she was 
a nervous subject. She had no influential friends, 
no knights and bishops, to appear In court on her 
behalf and show that she was well-connected and 
subject to aberrations, and had lately suffered from 
headaches. So she spent five years in Borstals except 
for a few days, when she escaped, and was found in 
the protection of a man. She told me what was said 
to her on her recapture. She was called a dirty, 
dirty thing, not fit to mix with the other reforma- 
tory girls; and she told me what she said to them. 
Something like this : 

"I ain't, then. It's you that's dirty. 'E's bin all 
right to me; treated me like a 'uman being. But 



130 THE LONDON SPY 

you — you treat me like a — like — a bit of — " here 
followed a rough and ready but vivid simile. 

She did not come home when she was released. 
A post in "service" was found for her; and when 
she did come home she had left "service." She 
came home in good clothes, and looked the world in 
the face — with a wink. She and the housemaid 
had got together, and the cook had noted a certain 
secret alliance between them. They could not be 
allowed to stay there to corrupt the girls of the fam- 
ily; their behaviour was reported to the reforma- 
tory authorities. But Edie and her friend were too 
quick for them. They bolted. 

The housemaid knew a "place," and as they were 
both bright pleasant girls they were received in that 
"place" — certainly no worse a "place" than the grim 
cold building that had held her for five years. It 
was a "place" where only "gentlemen" of good fam- 
ily were received; and the lady-in-charge impressed 
upon Edie the urgent necessity, under pain of im- 
mediate expulsion, of complete secrecy and tact. 
Some of the visitors were famous men, but if Edie 
recognised them from their portraits in the paper 
she was not to know them. See? And some of 
them were — peculiar — see? But if Edie wanted to 
get on, she would make herself agreeable and will- 
ing; the more she pleased, the more money she would 
get; but no "nonsense" would be tolerated by the 
"gentlemen." No intoxicated men were admitted to 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 131 

that house. Its reputation for respectability was 
unassailable, and Edie and her friend must live up to 
that. 

They did. And though Edie's mother wept and 
implored, and moaned at the life of her daughter, 
Edie was unmoved. She had had her five years of 
hell, and looked no farther than respite from its 
memories. I saw her the other day. She has left 
the house, and is now living in the semi-married state 
with a "gentleman" who "treats me like a Duchess, 
and says he never had anybody who suited him as 
I do. I don't know how long it'll last." 

But Edie's no fool; she has looked after herself 
well, and has money in the bank. And she has 
polished herself, and toned her accent and speech 
to the requirements of politeness. But it's her eyes 
that bother you, if you look at them after looking 
at Annie's. 

A more humane type is Mrs. Dobson, the occas- 
ional charlady. Life, for her, is a joke, and her 
philosophic attitude is expressed in profound husky 
bursts of laughter. If a man slips down in the street 
— Haw-haw! — out comes that laugh. If the dinner 
goes wrong or her rheumatism grips her — haw-haw! 
— short and explosive. Goodness and naughtiness, 
the rent-collector and the shooter-of-moons, the 
drunkard and the teetotaller — all make her laugh. 
She even laughed at the air raids. And her Sunday, 
instead of being a day of rest, is a day of laughter 



132 THE LONDON SPY 

— at her own troubles and at other people's. She 
has a hoarse voice and a clear spirit attuned to the 
old verities. Her laugh gives you at once her char- 
lacter, for laughs are as expressive as faces or talk. 
There is the ha-ha-ha ! of the brainless, healthy man. 
There is the shop-girl's falsetto her-her-her ! There 
is the deep ugh-ugh-ugh! of the flesh-loving man. 
There is the cackling Heh-heh-heh ! of the cheerless 
man. There is the toneless Teh-he-he I of the man 
without a soul; and there is the gusty haw-haw-haw 1 
of great spirits like Mrs. Dobson. 

When I first arrived at the tenement, I was asked 
how I was "going on" about cleaning. " 'F you 
want anything done, Mrs. Dobson'U do for yeh." 
I said: "I guess I can't afford that." "Oh, yes you 
can. She won't want much. Anything yeh like to 
give 'er — that's 'er style." "Well, whoi is Mrs. 
Dobson?" "Oh, 'er on the forf floor. You know 
— stout little party, rather bad on 'er feet, and fond 
of 'er little drop." "Oh, /know." And so I became 
one more charge of Mrs. Dobson's. 

The Duchess she was called, and I liked her much 
better than the only Duchess I have met. The name 
came to her from early days when she kept a fruit 
and vegetable stall, which shamed its neighbouring 
stalls by its polish, neatness, and arrangement, and 
by the personal splck-and-spanness of Its proprietor. 
She was an excellent cook — ^but for her language 
many a select household would have thought her a 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 133 

prize; a good laundress, a doughty scrubber, a con- 
fident nurse, and a regular "one" with babies. And 
what a worker! How she would cut about up and 
down the steep stone stairs of the tenement, rheu- 
matism and all. "If work's gotta be done, get on 
with it. Standing looking at it won't do it. Walk 
into it. That's what I do and alwis 'ave 'ad to do. 
I dunno, though . . . some people seem to get away 
with it. Look at that dam fool downstairs I do for 
— ^young 'Artley, the medical. 'E won't work if 'e 
can get out of it. 'Spose we was all like that? Nice 
sorta world it'd be — eh? And yet 'e seems to git on. 
Haw-haw." 

I don't know what there is of inspiration in the 
business of daily house-helpers, but I have never yet 
met a disagreeable charlady. All seem to possess, as 
a blessed recompense, some store of serenity, some 
faculty for easy outlook upon the saddest prospect. 
Mrs. Dobson has had two children, both wrong 'uns. 
They took after farver, who disappeared some years 
ago. The elder boy, after doing well in an office, 
earning £3 a week — of which he gave his mother 
eight shillings a week — "I don't eat more'n eight 
shillings' worth" — was caught with his hand in the 
safe, and is now in Reading. The younger got no 
job at all, nor tried for one. He lounged about the 
streets, and lived on his mother, demanding four 
meals a day, and when these were not to be had, 
assaulted her with evil words and nubbly fists. 



134. THE LONDON SPY 

Often she appeared in public with a black eye or dis- 
coloured cheek, and as it was known that she was 
not living with her husband, she was at great trouble 
in inventing convincing stories about them. But 
at last the wastrel got his in a street-corner fight. 

But she speaks of them proudly, as wonders of 
wickedness. "That George of mine — 'e was a bit 
of no-good, if yeh like. I dunno when I come across 
such a rotter as 'e was. 'E never cared fer nobody. 
The mess 'e useter make of 'is farver when they 'ad 



a row. . . ." 



When there is no work to be had she sits and 
chuckles at the damnableness of things; and when 
she is summoned to a job she receives it with Falstaf- 
fian laughter. 

"Please, Missis Dobson, mumma's in bed wiv 'er 
bad leg, and can you come up and do our dinner?" 

"Haw-haw! Never a minute's peace. / dunna 
'ow you'd all go on wivout me. All right, ducky — ? 
I'll be up in a minute. . . . And wipe yer nose — ? 
snotty-face! If I was yer mother. . . ." 

She is the willing slave of the tenement. If a 
difficult or disagreeable task is to be done, people 
think at once of her, and slide it to her shoulders. 
She is a soft-mark, easily imposed upon; and her ac- 
quaintances know It. "Missis Dobson'll see to that." 
"I wonder if yeh'd mind. Missis Dobson. You 
understand these things, and I'm such a fool." So 
always she is on her feet, doing other people's shop- 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 135 

ping, taking other people's children to the doctor, 
minding other people's babies, and buying other 
people's insurance stamps; and in return they give her 
a few coppers or a drink or a meal, and lend her 
their novelettes. "I like a bit o' love — I don't want 
to read the noospaper 'orrors." 

Often she has a shilling on the big races with 
the caretaker, and roars with laughter and gets 
mildly drunk when she backs a winner, and laughs 
out rich round curses when she loses. "My blasted 
'orses seem to be like me — always left down the 
course and sworn at. Haw-haw!" Her chief joy 
in life is her cup of tea, "me old cup of glory!" 
It is a blessed comforter to the poor, the cup of 
tea; that and a good fire change the whole complex- 
ion of things from drab to rosy. In the morning, 
if you are out of sorts, it bucks you up. In the mid- 
dle of washing-day it at once soothes and recreates 
energy. At the end of washing-day it takes the 
edge off exhaustion and warms the heart through. 
In the afternoon it provides a blessed space of rest 
and refreshment; and at all hours it lightens the 
oppressive air, disperses worry, packs clouds away, 
and brings new hope or at least calm acceptance. In 
sorrow or rejoicing, war or peace — "let's make a 
cup o' tea, dearie !" 

So that she has her tea, Mrs. Dobson can carry 
on. Not until that is out of reach, will she give in. 
Through many foodless days and fireless winter 



136 THE LONDON SPY 

weeks, people would urge her to seek relief — to go 
on the parish or apply to the church for coal and 
groceries tickets. "What — me 'old out for Charity? 
No fear, my gel. Not me. I ain't come as low as 
that yet. I got some self-respect left. As long as 
I can get me cup o' tea, I can 'old out till things 
improve. I got me 'ealth and strength, thank God, 
and while I got that I won't be in nobody's debt. 
I ain't going truckhng to nobody." 

Granny Simpson was just such another, but In a 
softer key. She never stood up to life. She ac- 
cepted, without complaint and without appreciation; 
and she is now in "the house." But her afternoon 
out is a Great Adventure, and sometimes she may 
be seen down our street. Her whole life has been 
bounded by narrow streets, lowering roofs and 
cramped rooms. Her horizon physically, was the 
other side of the street; mentally, to-morrow. She 
dared not look farther. From childhood her life has 
been without distance or "views." She was born in 
Hoxton, and lived and slaved in Hoxton, fighting 
always for the present. Even her rent was collected 
daily, for her landlord knew how hazardous was 
to-morrow. Her life was flat, without much sorrow 
or much joy; just a dreary struggle. No man had 
chosen her; no romance, which she called "nonsense,'* 
had come to her. Single she had lived and toiled. 
She had little to give in the way of friendship, and 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 137 

therefore received none, for she wanted that vital 
something that inspires interest and feeling. When 
she could no longer hold a needle, she knew that it 
was The House. Neighbours commiserated her de- 
scent and her miserable sentence, but she saw it 
otherwise. She was beaten, but though she lost her 
spirit, she did not lose her trust in the essential 
goodness of things. 

" 'Taint so bad, when you look at it prop'ly. We 
all got to sink our pride sometimes. 'Tany rate, 
it'll be me first real rest. I shan't 'ave no more 
worry about anything." 

She is a bit of a character in the district, and 
on her afternoon out receives many greetings. Old 
age and open misfortune have given her a more defi- 
nite character and loosened her early reserve. 
People smile upon her now, though before she could 
not command a nod. 

One outing is much like another. It proceeds 
something like this. She potters from the gates of 
the House, in its evil grey uniform, and peers up 
and down the street. The sun shows a pallid face 
through the smoke, and falls on littered streets, 
ragged roofs, unkempt doorways, and greasy shops. 
Its rays beat up the accumulated odours of cellar 
and alley-way, and, to most noses, the air is bitter. 
But Granny sniffs it, and approves. ''Lovely day 
again. I always 'ave the luck. I always 'ave King's 
weather!" 



138 THE LONDON SPY 

A dock-man, passing, stops. " 'Ullo, Gran. Your 
day orf again? I wish I was you. 'Ere — that'll get 
you a drop o' something." A few coins pass. 

"Well, I never. Now if that ain't kind. Real 
kind. Well, well. . . . There's a lot o' good in the 
world, if you only knew it. Fourpence. Now with 
that I could 'ave a nice tram-ride. And yet a little 
drop o' something'd be nice, too. It'd 'ave to be 
beer, though." 

She pads away, debating the matter — tram-ride 
or a little drop o' something. Then a young girl, 
dressed in the flashy cast-offs of the second-hand, 
observes her. 

"Cheero, Ma! Orf on the loose again? 'Ere — 
I done a good bit o' business last night. 'Ere's some- 
thing to spend at the Church Bazaar — that'll get 
you a glass or two." 

"Well, now, dearie, if that ain't kind. You've 
got a 'eart, you 'ave." 

Granny marches on, with firmer step now. "A 
nice ride and a drop o' something. Well, well. . . . 
God is good, bless 'Is 'eart, if we only knew." 

Then, except on the occasions when the casual 
benefits of good hearts have failed her. Granny 
follows her regular programme. She boards an 
East-bound tram-car, with much flighty back-chat to 
the conductor, and takes a ticket for Wanstead 
Flats; and on the journey looks keenly about her, 
seeing everything and enjoying everything. There 



IN THE STREETS OF THE SIMPLE 139 

isn't much doing that escapes her. At the Flats 
she leaves the car, and stands for some moments, 
looking upon the "view." She looks upon an open 
space of withered grass and hard, bald turf. 
The turf is usually littered with oddments of paper. 
Behind the broken bushes the tram-cars clatter, and 
the horizon offers ash-heaps and factories sending 
smoke across the brown grass. The stunted trees 
give it an air of desolation. Granny stajids and 
sniffs and sniffs. 

"Different air out here altogether. Country air, 
like. And what a fine view. Well, God is good, 
bless Ts 'eart, letting me get out 'ere. And if I 
was a lady, I'd come and sit out 'ere every day!" 



— V— 

IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 

JOHNSON'S remarks upon the felicities afforded 
by a good inn might aptly be applied to good 
shops. Shops are the first amenity of civilisation. 
They are a promise of sociability. They give news 
of the civil bustle of men. They are an unwaning de- 
light for all, young and old, rich and poor; for you 
may have all the joy of their windows without spend- 
ing a penny. Their lights are more alluring and more 
satisfying than the lights of all your houses of en- 
tertainment, and you are more candidly welcomed at 
their doors than at the doors of most inns. Note 
how even a short line of shops stirs the languid 
prospect of a suburban street, and how they lighten 
the tone of things within their immediate neighbour- 
hood. Within the orbit of shops people move more 
briskly, if slowly, than in the long streets of houses. 
The sight of a High Street of bright shops after 
much turning in side streets is as pleasing and In- 
vigorating as the sight of a good Inn after a lonely 
country walk. You feel once again In touch with 
the humanities and with the genial swell of affairs. 
London has shops for all tastes; gigantic shops, 
every-day shops, dainty shops, eccentric shops, whim- 

uo 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 141 

sical shops, small shops, bazaars, booths, arcades, 
and stalls. Every commodity that the world pro- 
duces has Its proper shop in London. There are 
shops for pearls and platinums an^d ivory; shops for 
Eastern silks and spices; shops for Arctic furs; shops 
for American candy; shops for East Indian coral; 
shops for Cingalese fruits; shops for South Sea bric' 
a-brac; shops (once again) for German delicatessen, 
for Lapland oils, for Serbian embroidery, for Chinese 
musical instruments and for Japanese underwear; 
and shops for all the world's foods and all the 
world's postage-stamps. 

The great Stores are imposing pieces and lend 
pomp to the streets they occupy, but my fancy pre- 
fers the grace and dignity of the smaller shops. 
These do not profess the large manner. They are 
nice In their architecture and individual in their 
methods. They retain the old style, when. If a shop 
bore the name of Smith or Jones over the door, you 
could go In and ask for Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith, 
and be sure of finding him. Few of them to-day have 
personal association with the names over their doors, 
but style and atmosphere remain. I think of the 
beautiful shops of Fribourg & Treyer, In Haymar- 
ket, of Hatchard and Fortnum & Mason, In Picca- 
dilly, of Dunhlll's, In Duke Street, of the bell foun- 
dry in Whitechapel Road, of Buzzard's In Oxford 
Streef, of Quaritch's in Grafton Street, of Ellis', in 
Bond Street, of the old chemist's shop in Drury 



142 THE LONDON SPY 

Lane, of Francis Downman's wine-shop in Dean 
Street, of Birch's in Cornhill, of the shops under the 
old houses at Holborn Bars, and of various shops in 
Burlington Arcade and round about Savile row. 
All of them are shops of age and character — vintage 
shops. 

They know no rough business of buying and sell- 
ing. You choose or order what you want, and the 
assistants are delighted to give you their time and 
to talk with you about your purchases and about 
their vocation. It is no mere trade; it is more than 
a profession; and the assistants are of the priest- 
hood. At Dunhill's, pipes are sold by ceremony, 
and the assistants are elegantly robed and handle 
the pipes with gloved hands. There is a story told 
in Duke street of the hasty young man from the 
provinces blundering into Dunhill's. 

"Sir?" 

"I want a pipe." 

The priest looked perplexed and took counsel of 
himself. "A Pipe? Pipe?" 

"Yes, a pipe. You know — briar." 

"Pipe, sir?" still more embarrassed. "Pipe?" 

"Yes, hang it all, man. A pipe. Quick — I've 
got to catch a train. PIPE!" 

"Pipe?'M." The high priest was called. "Gen- 
tleman wants a pipe." 

"A pipe?" Senior and junior stared upon the 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE IVIARKETS 143 

young man with vexed brows. "Afraid I don't 
quite — " 

"Dash It all, don't you sell pipes here? Well, I 
want a pipe. What you smoke. One of your pipes. 
A Dunhill. . . ." 

"O-o-o-oh!" with a swift clearing of face. "O-o- 
oh, a Dunhill? Now I understand, sir. But you 
said a pipe!" 

In Burlington Arcade there is similar ceremony. 
You do not buy things in the Arcade. You select 
and order — half a dozen pairs of boots, two dozen 
ties, six dozen collars; and, if you are a born fool, 
a dressing-gown at fifty pounds and a dozen lounge 
shirts at two guineas each. And when you buy cig- 
arettes at Fribourg & Treyer's or wine at Mr. Down- 
man's, the business rises to ritual. 

It is the shops of London, I think, that give the 
Cockney child his first thrill of rapture In his city. 
Their number, their brave display, and their multi- 
tudinous appeal are sure breath-takers. Rank upon 
rank they stand for review, each with Its personal 
note, each offering something new and splendid, 
necessary or deeply desirable. Indeed, a walk 
through the shop-streets Is as good a tonic as I know; 
better than any country solitude. Amid the happy 
parade and warm tumults of the streets one may 
escape In an hour from all gloom and Introspection; 
the long green desert of the country only Intensifies 
these disorders. Many folk, when harassed, or 



144 THE LONDON SPY 

run down, express a desire to "get away from every- 
thing;" and they try to do this by going to the 
country. But the effectual escape is not from 
"things," but from yourself; and I find that in the 
fields and woods the most looming object of the 
landscape is oneself. It o'ertops everything, and 
colours everything. 

It Is a mistake, I think, that town life rubs down 
the bright angles of character. Truly only in town 
are people their whimsical selves, living, freely and 
fully, their own lives. Life in the country is of 
necessity communal; one must fit in or get out; and 
for social intercourse one is limited to one's imme- 
diate circle, which may be unsympathetic. Choice of 
society or solitude is not to be had. You are either 
bothered by dull visitors or eyed sideways with sul- 
len curiosity. But London never intrudes. There 
one may find whatever sort of society one wishes, 
or complete solitude, at the moment's whim; and to 
all who are suffering from dumps, nerves, megrims, 
vapours, or boredom, I would say — Go out and look 
at the shops. Before you know it, your alien hu- 
mours will be dissipated. 

I was brought up in the heart of shop-land, and 
my earliest memories are of the West End highways, 
and of darting, keen-eyed, from one shop-window to 
another; and never have they ceased to fascinate me. 
I can still stroll for miles down their lines, or waste 
hours within their doors, without a moment of fa- 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 145 

tigue. At every pace the mind Is caught and occu- 
pied; kept alert but not unsettled. Let me get Into 
Fortnum & Mason's, and I ask no better entertain- 
ment. That Is, for me, the most alluring of all 
shops; and although I'm a plain man, of leg-of- 
mutton tastes, the sight of their windows and their 
garnished delicacies Is Irresistible. I cannot pass 
them. I must go In and survey the glazed chickens 
and the noble briskets, the glossy boars' heads, the 
brown Bath chaps, the bewildering assortment of 
exotic hors d'ceiivres — cocks' combs in jelly, truf- 
fles from Perlgord, caviare from Astrachan, an- 
chovies from Scandinavia, olives from the South — 
in jars and bottles, their vessels fashioned In fan- 
tastic shape for their delightful purposes. Each 
corner of the shop makes Its picture. In one, the 
hams, tongues, fowls, galantines, sausages and sala- 
mis; In another the Yorkshire pies. Melton Mow- 
brays, game pies, Oxford brawns, jellies, biscuits and 
Oriental flim-flams — curry powders, potted char, 
Bombay ducks, poppadums, ginger, chutnees, man- 
goes balachoung; and, in another, the thousand little 
tins, jars, packets and bottles of table trifles, each 
with Its native style and decoration; and. If you 
are lucky, through It all will march the thrilling- 
figure of a white-robed chef bringing from below- 
some lordly dish for the "cold" table. 

I say It Is one of the spectacles of London, and 
it always draws me when I am In Piccadilly; but 



146 THE LONDON SPY 

-there were days when it would have driven me to 
fury. Any ham-and-beef shop had that effect on 
me, then. You may have noticed, if you have had 
hungry days, that it's the ham-and-beef shops that 
always exasperate. Your stomach may be empty, 
and your limbs faint, but you can pass the butcher, 
the grocer, the baker, the fishmonger, the confec- 
tioner, even restaurants and tea-shops without any 
spasms. It's the ham-and-beef shop, with its genteel 
and titillating display ready to the eye, that makes 
you look round for that 'alf-brick. It's the sight 
of the decked and garnished dishes — the ham in 
cut and its pink and cream slices and its pink odour — 
that makes a Communist of a hungry Tory. 

There were two kinds of shops then that inflicted 
sweet torment upon me — ham-and-beef shops and 
bookshops. Sometimes I was able to enter one of 
them, but never both in the same week. Mostly I 
could only look and satisfy my longings with a sniff 
at the one and a sort of second-hand taste of the 
other. How I would gaze upon the hams and the 
jellied tongues! And how I would pore over the 
tantalising pages of the Bookman Christmas Num- 
ber, which told me, curtly, of delicious treasures 
that I could never possess. How I would languish 
outside the windows of that bookshop in Queen 
Street, feeding my eyes and my envy with sight of 
precious volumes to be had for a certain number 
of shillings that I never could get together. I never 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE JVIARKETS 147 

dared to go In, save when I went on the business 
of a sixpenny edition; I feared that they would 
know that I had nothing in my pocket, and had 
merely come to handle, to sample, to snatch a few 
minutes' delight without fee; and that they would 
kick me out. I don't think now that they would 
have done that; booksellers are humane creatures; 
but youth sees itself too sharply. 

For the Stores I care little. Though admirable 
as conveniences, they have none of the appeal of 
the shops, nor are their assistants so human and 
agreeable as the small-shop assistant. How can. 
they be — working in palaces? Of necessity they 
acquire something of the marble-and-gilt tone of 
their surroundings; and the marmoreal manner 
though proper to church sidesmen, butlers, and toast- 
masters, ill becomes the coquetry of shopping. 
Then I always have the feeling, in these places, that 
I'm under observation. It may be conscience, but 
every pillar seems to shield a detective, and every 
other shopper has the detective air. It is very pleas- 
ant to stroll through courtyards with fountains and 
mosaic pavements, to walk upstairs on velvet pile, to 
play bo-peep around pillars of Carrara marble, to 
find, on wet days, lunch and telephone and ticket- 
office and cloakroom under one roof; but that isn't 
shopping. One goes to the Stores deliberately, giv- 
ing a day or half-day to it; but shopping only yields 
its full flavour when it is done in the first rush of a 



148 THE LONDON SPY 

whim or a mood. It should begin, without intent, on 
a sudden glance at a shop-window and the fierce 
desire to spend money, and should cease with satiety 
or empty pockets. The journey from shop to shop 
whets the appetite, but the sight of the Stores, where 
everything lies within reach, dissuades rather than 
excites. There is no fun in making conquest of the 
willing. 

Another thing — whether by accident or personal 
eccentricity, I never can get what I want in these 
universal provision stores, and I feel that the assist- 
ant doesn't really care whether I do or not. The 
first question he asks you, when you have stated 
that you want a certain article is: "What sort?" 
Why should he ask me that? The doctor might 
just as well ask you what sort of medicine you would 
like, or a lawyer what sort of action you'd like to 
bring. These people are in their job year in and year 
out, and their business is to advise the customer, 
not to let the poor fool fuddle himself with choos- 
ing. Your ordinary tailor always asks you what 
material you'd like for your new suit, and how you'd 
like it cut. Yet he is supposed to be a specialist In 
clothes, giving his time and attention to the study of 
styles and fashions and clothes generally. It is for 
him to prescribe for me; to tell me how I ought to 
dress; not to let me go out in a broad-stripe, high- 
coloured cloth that can only fitly be worn by your 
six-foot, broad-shouldered man. But he doesn't 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 149 

care. If I went to the Stores and said I wanted a 
hat, and picked out a tall silk hat, with curly brim, 
I know the assistant would let me go away with it. 

Now your bookseller is more jealous of his repu- 
tation. I never knew a London bookseller who 
would let his customer make a fool of himself with 
his books. He wouldn't let the tired business man, 
who, he knew, wanted Mr. Phillips Oppenheim or 
Mr. David Whitelaw, go away with Einstein or 
the Life and Letters of the Bishop of Duddington. 
Nor would he let the man of serious bent, who al- 
ways wanted something solid, go out with a summer- 
holiday story about love under the apple trees. 
Not he. He would hate himself for a week if that 
happened, 

"Pardon me, sir. No. Not that one. A slight 
mistake, I think. It might suit the lighter build of 
mind, but hardly yours, I think. Allow me — let me 
take it. Thank you. . . . Now this, I think — this 
is perhaps a little more in the key. An excellent little 
work by Professor Thomas Burke — published last 
week — -'The Inter-relation of Prunes and Prisms 



y 5> 



But better even than shops or stores are the stalls 
of the street-markets. They lack the gloss and dig- 
nity and brilliance of the shops but they have an 
open-air boldness that is equally alluring; and if 
you want to spy upon the Londoner in his most un- 
self-conscious phases, the best observation-posts are 



150 THE LONDON SPY 

the street markets. The streets themselves, and the 
theatres and the parks and the bars, all throw back 
the high lights of humanity, but it is humanity seek- 
ing recreation and a little conscious of itself. In 
the markets we have people on business, oblivious 
of everything but the occasion of the moment; and 
we see them as they are, in the habit and speech of 
every day, fighting the battle of life and seeking the 
elusive something-for-nothing, peering here and 
there for the cheapest meat or fish, or a piece of oil- 
cloth for the kitchen, or a parlour table or trim- 
mings for a hat. 

"Going to market," is a phrase that is seldom 
heard among the respectable, who suppose it to be 
a phrase descriptive of a village function. For their 
household purchases they "go shopping," but those 
in less comfortable circumstances do literally "go 
to market." The shops are not for them. They 
find their value in those narrow streets of stalls which 
evoke memories of the hot, sounding Bazaars and 
Bonanzas of the East. 

There were stalls when London and Westminster 
first began to trade, and though much has changed 
and disappeared in the passing of the centuries, the 
stalls remain, and their cries remain. Once it was 
"What d'ye lack, my masters, what d'ye lack?" 
"Hot codlings!" "Buy any gingerbread ! Gilt gin- 
gerbread!" "What is't you buy — rattles, drums, 
halberts, horses, fiddles of the finest?" "New Bal- 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 151 

lads!" "Cherry Ripe!" "Ribs of beef!" "Hot 
sheep's feet!" "Hot peascod!" "Pepper and saf- 
fron!" "Mack-er-el !" "Fine felt hats or spec- 
tacles to read!" "Silks, lawns, and Paris thread!" 
"Rushes green!" To-day It Is "Buy! Buy! Buy!" 
" 'Ere's yer fine orange — all sahnd an' juicy!" 
"Pick 'em out where yeh like !" "Comerlong, ladies, 
this way fer yer fine ripe strawb'ry!" Long may 
they continue to flourish and to cry! For how 
much more joyous it is to shop casually and exchange 
rough banter in the open air (though the air be none 
too sweet) than in the elaborately appointed Em- 
porium or Stores. 

The war brought a great Increase in the number 
of street markets, and we have lately heard much out- 
cry from the Ill-used shops against their pert com- 
petitors. Similar outcry w^as made in Elizabeth's 
time by the shop-keepers against stall-holders as 
"unruly people." But questions of prestige and 
economics apart, I am all for the stalls. Selfridge's 
and Harrods are delightful places in which to spend 
a dull hour, but, as I have said, that is about all I 
do spend there. For my lighter purchases I go to the 
stalls. Their tradition goes farther than that of 
the shops ; too, they have more warmth, colour and 
vitality. The stores-assistant, even at his best, serves 
you casually, wearily, as though his business were 
Indeed a business and a sorry one. I were rather 
served by the most scrapegrace pedlar or hawker or 



152 THE LONDON SPY 

stall-holder than the most polished shop-assistant; 
for with your stall-holder every sale is an occasion 
for an outburst, a hoop-la ! of delight. He rejoices 
at his business, and tells the street about it, where 
your shop-keeper goes about his trading darkly, 
with hushed voice, as though fearful lest his rival 
should get to hear about it. He labours in secret 
while the stall-holder shouts to the sunshine or cries 
your custom under flagrant naphthas. 

Monk and I lately filled a morning with a tour of 
these bazaars beginning at Soho and finishing at 
Roman Road, E. Most people, when they think 
of street markets, think only of two — Caledonian 
Market and the Sunday morning Market of Middle- 
sex Street. But neither of these markets has now 
any shred of character left. Too much press pub- 
licity has ruined them. Petticoat Lane years ago 
became a show place, and laid itself out to attract the 
unsophisticated sightseer, as the New York Bowery 
did; and when, during the war, Mayfair began to 
visit Caledonian Market in its Rolls-Royces, one 
knew that it was discovered and finished. 

But there are others, equally picturesque, and 
full of rich character and exclusive customs. All 
working-class quarters, and most suburbs have, of 
course, their Saturday night stall markets, but I am 
speaking here of those markets that persist through 
the week — in Soho, Seven Dials, Notting Dale, Far- 
ringdon Road, Brick Lane, and in Whitecross Street 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 153 

under the eccentric spire of St, Luke's. Each has 
its distinguishing "tone," each its own type of shop- 
per and hawker, and each Its physical atmosphere 
(very strong, this). 

The Berwick Street Market is chiefly kept by 
Jews, but Its patrons are cosmopolitan — French, 
Swiss, Italian, Greek, and Suburban. At every step 
one breathes garlic and wool, and receives fragments 
of talk In many richly-coloured dialects of Europe. 
Berwick Street serves not only the table but the 
Bottom Drawer as well. Here are "silk" stockings 
at a shilling or so, "pearl" necklaces, "Brussels" lace, 
blouses, jumpers, dress lengths, shirts, vests, pants, 
misfit trousers, collars, ties, jostling the frolic produce 
of the South, pimentos, olives, Roquefort, ravioli, 
•green peppers, truffles of Perigord, ChiantI, salsify, 
polenta, Bologna sausage, capsicum, salami. Here 
In the morning you will find the women of France, 
hatless, doing their marche as at home, and with 
them the knowing ones from the suburbs, who have 
learnt the hygienic and aesthetic value of a varied 
table. People move here with that alert languour 
that belongs to the quarter. Even strangers, mov- 
ing with the business-like tread of the Londoner, 
catch something of Its quality, and come from Ber- 
wick Street with a lither toe and a more soujjlant 
eye. 

Here they do not cry their wares; they wheedle 
you. You are making a difficult passage through 



154 THE LONDON SPY 

Little Pulteney Street, when an Oriental whisper 
tickles your ear — "Lovely thilk tieth, thir — on'y a 
shilling each !" "Jutht look at theth thockth, thir — 
all thilk!" But you are not pestered — the remark 
Is dropped only as a hint. There is none of the 
buy-buy-buy clamour here. Like the stores, this 
market has its regular customers and it only makes 
a bid for your attention in the manner of the shop- 
walker. Even the great corner shop for fish and 
poultry, in Rupert Street, festooned with fowls and 
draped with flat fish, does its vast business with little 
noise. The assistants do not, as in East End Mar- 
kets, step out and buttonhole the wayfarer with chal- 
lenges — " 'Ere — mister — you never see a finer bird 
than that, / know. Just 'ave a feel of it — go on. I 
can do you that at one-and-ten a pound." Or "Sort 
'em out where yeh like — all sahnd and juicy!" The 
scene is as quietly vivacious as the marche of a 
French country town. 

I wish that something of this nonchalance might 
be conveyed to the somewhat pedestrian affairs of 
Hoxton Street. The physical air here is heavy, and 
few breezes come to lighten it. It is fed with the 
odours of whelks, sheeps' hearts, trotters, offal, fish- 
and-chips, vegetables and that devitalising smell that 
belongs to very second-hand furniture. But food 
prevails, for Hoxton Street's main business is to 
keep body and soul together, and the rare occasions 
of silken dalliance are sufliciently served by the "Old 



IN THE SHOPS AND THE MARKETS 155 

Britt," now, alas, a movie palace, and a few pubs, 
of which I like most "The Bacchus." Here is much 
study for the philosopher. Marketing here moves 
slowly, anxiously. It is not a matter of seeking 
the best at the lowest price, but of looking for what 
can be got for a few pence. The faces are knitted 
into shapes of care, and the eyes are tense, and the 
fingers close tightly upon the purses, as the women 
hover around each stall, fearful of paying too dearly 
for even a makeshift meal. Nerves are on edge, 
and buyers and sellers alike are petulant. Each 
walks on a narrow ledge above disaster. It is as 
quiet as the Soho market, but with a different tone. 
Certainly they make a noise, but their noise is less 
cheerful than Soho's quiet. It has a bitter note, al- 
most a wailing in it. 

Farther eastward, in Chrisp Street, Poplar, the 
tones of life are a little louder and fuller, and the 
wares are well assorted. They do well here. Many 
stalls have abandoned the old rowdy naphtha flares 
and are fitted with electric light. Old iron and old 
magazines break the line of to-day's rabbits and yes- 
terday's fish. The old sweetstuff stall survives here, 
with its home-made "humbugs" and clove rock and 
bull's-eyes; and these light the street with the spirit 
of childhood. I often pity the children of Kensing- 
ton Gardens with their silken clothes and "latest 
children's fashions" and well-upholstered carriages 
and sedate nursemaids. They miss so much. I am 



156 THE LONDON SPY 

sure they would rather know the joy of the toffee 
apple or the rapture of the weekly penny, and the 
nervous delight of placing it to the highest advan- 
tage, than move among the emblems of prosperity. 
But their sheltered lives will never give it. They 
may, in later life, visit these markets, but they will 
never catch their true temper. They may find some 
pleasure in them, but it will be counterfeit pleasure. 
The doll at three-halfpence (yes, you can get dolls 
for three-halfpence), the parlour game at twopence, 
the box of coloured crayons at three-halfpence, the 
singing bird in a cage at twopence — they will never 
suffer the ecstasy of first possession of these wonders. 
One must be a child, and a child of the streets, to 
taste the true enjoyment of that moment. 

Every child of Mayfair and Kensington who saw 
the Chaplin picture, "The Kid," must have wished 
he were that Kid, as every poor child who wanders 
down Oxford Street wishes that he had a rich father. 
But if the wish of the poor child were satisfied he 
would be quickly disappointed, for his rich fath^n is to dance all night, get on with it. 
Have you seen the Englishman, even the volatile 
artist-Englishman, go through the motions of what 
he calls dancing? It is a sober parade round a hot 
room with a woman, to the sticky rhythms of a thin 
band; a stiff, ungainly walk, as of school-children 
at drill, performed with set face and idiotic eye. 
Strange that the Englishman, who cannot and never 
will dance, has one idea of winter entertainment — 
dancing; that is, pottering about with a half-dressed 
girl. If his reason for dancing lies in sex-attraction, 
why doesn't he do it properly, with cymbals and fire, 
and invocations, instead of with this tepid capering? 
But the dance and the ball-room are incompatible. 
Frenzy and grace cannot live with white ties. I 
have more respect for the clerk who picks up a girl 
on the sea-front and salutes Pan under the cliff, at 
the cost of a box of chocolates, than I have for these 
drawing-room trotters. 



296 THE LONDON SPY 

Four hundred years ago, the common folk did 
dance with frenzy and festal ecstasy, and knew what 
they were doing; and the titles and sweet airs of 
those old dances, and the pagan ritual that accom- 
panied them, bring happy echoes to an ear surfeited 
with the machine-made titles of modern dances: 
"Reve d'Amour," "Whispering," "Heart to Heart," 
"Shadows," "Saucy," "Provoking," "Powder Rag," 
and that sort of thing. Meaningless titles these; but 
on sixteenth century country greens they did better. 
Listen — "Green Stockings," "Ropely Village," "The 
Red Shore," "Temple Bar," "Goose and Gridiron," 
"Cushion Dance," "Parson's Green," "Windsor 
Tarass," "Farise's Fear," "Lie Down, Love," 
"Cherry Breasts," "Sellenger's Round," "Packing- 
ton's Pound," "Cuckolds all Arow," "Joan's Placket 
is Undone," "Have at thy Coat," "Bobbing Joan," 
"Granny's Delight," "Blowzy Bella," and "Rub Her 
Down with Straw." These are coarse; the former 
only vulgar. 

There's a whole moral world between the two 
qualities. The professional Bohemia is a finicky 
and vulgar Bohemia; the Cockney's, coarse and 
human. Coarseness is healthy and of the spirit; 
vulgarity an empty creation without a soul. It is the 
difference between Rabelais and the "London Mail"; 
between Falstaff and "Fatty" Arbuckle; between the 
restoration comedies and Mr. Cochran's select re- 
vues; between Bartholomew Fair and the seaside 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 297 

Kursaals; between the four-ale bar of a pub, and the 
Cafe Royal; between London and Brighton. 

Brighton prides itself on its Bohemian spirit, and 
certainly it has the spirit of the vociferous Bohemia. 
Its sea-front on Sundays is a microcosm of this vul- 
garity; a galanty-show of racing men, the rough stuff 
of the London stage, publicans, third-rate artists, 
blazing kerbstone stockbrokers, motors, cigars, and 
the sumptuous "JuHets of a night." All these things 
are to be found, I know, in equal measure in London, 
but London has better things to balance them, while 
Brighton exists by and for these things. George 
IV., most vulgar of many vulgar kings, "made" 
Brightelmstone, and I am sure he would be delighted 
with it to-day. The "fat Adonis of forty" would 
find much congenial company, for the parade on 
Sunday morning is a parade of Fatties and their kept 
women. This parade is rehearsed on Saturdays, 
when life on the Brighton road is made unbearable 
for ordinary people by a whirlwind of limousines, 
fatness, Corona Coronas, and patchouli. The shar- 
rabang may be noisy, but spontaneous noise is not 
always so vulgar as certain demonstrative attitudes 
in a Rolls-Royce. All day the hills and vales of the 
Brighton road re-echo wheezily: "Thank God for 
the war!" I think I prefer a sharrabang chorus of 
"Stop yerticklin', Jock!" 

Brighton is the Holy City of the Cheap-Rich. 
When the obscure merchant has made money, his 



298 THE LONDON SPY 

first thought is an automobile; his second — a week- 
end at Brighton. In the agreeable company of his 
fellows and their "birds" at Brighton he learns to 
talk of Women like a nasty-minded schoolboy; and, 
by his conduct, he has made a week-end at Brighton 
the subject of smutty music-hall jokes. This week- 
end is a study of plethora. It is an example of the 
Cheap-Rich's notion of good living — Too Much of 
Everything. 

It is a strident display of over-dressing, over-eat- 
ing, over-drinking, over-spending, over-indulgence. 
Brighton beach in August is no beautiful sight, but 
it Is the resort of those who have worked for their 
little escape, who have denied themselves and saved 
against this one bright-beaded fortnight of the year. 
They have a right to let themselves go, and their 
attitudes of negligence are not without charm. This 
coarseness of the poor puts shame upon the vulgarity 
of the rich, who destroy the beauty of the sea and 
Interrupt the virgin wind, and make Brighton ugly 
with the ugliness of empty, unearned, material suc- 
cess. 

To the philosopher, it Is a more painful study than 
Spltalfields or Hoxton or Cradley Heath, for joy 
comes to these places; but at Brighton there is only 
pleasure; and there Is no sadder sight than that of 
the wealthy fool trying to buy pleasure in life. For 
him pleasure lives In glasses and on plates, In women 
and motors. He must have always a car and a 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 299 

group of "the boys," or a woman, and the crowded 
precincts of big hotels and restaurants. He has a 
certain greasy appreciation of the fat things of life, 
but no zest in them. His appetite needs always the 
flick of the aperitif 'to urge it to its function. The 
uneasiness of surfeit hangs about him. The high 
revelries of Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, 
and the crash of cymbals in dark mountain heights, 
carry some note of animal ecstasy, some cry of the 
human feast; but this poor parched phantom of fri- 
volity, this thin body, galvanised into a semblance of 
movement, arouses only disgust. 

He does not cultivate the senses; he indulges them. 
He is not a gourmet, but a glutton. He is not an 
amorist, but a buyer of skirts. The man of sense 
and imagination can break the conventions quietly — 
and often does — but the Brighton visitor does not 
make infidelity serious. He only makes it mean. 
What his imagination cannot do, Brighton does for 
him. It shows him how to have what he calls "a 
good time" without any expenditure of taste, judg- 
ment, sense, or manners. He need only spend the 
one thing he has — money. Brighton will do the 
rest. 

But the Cockney Bohemian makes his own joys; 
he does not buy them. Put him where you will — in 
a pub, in a ship, on the battlefield. In barracks, in a 
railway smash, In a fog, in a desert. In the suburbs, 
in church, in prison, in a mess — and there he will 



300 THE LONDON SPY 

create Bohemia. At all times and places, and at all 
ages, he is the born Bohemian; and though grey 
hairs may ill become the fool and jester, your elder 
Cockney continues to the last to laugh sardonically at 
the world and at himself. There he stands, with his 
feet on Bohemian soil, a creature of fire and salt, 
grimacing disrespect at arid achievement, tickling 
us with his humours, and Inviting us, vehemently, to 
share his stock of bananas. 

He is to be found in many places, for he belongs 
to no compact section. He is in Islington and West- 
minster, in Stepney and Jermyn Street, in Canning 
Town and Hoxton and Camden Town, and if his ac- 
cent and profanity are more harsh and fluent in 
Lavender Hill than in Piccadilly, the difference is 
only of degree, for Bohemianism Is no matter of 
forms and fashions, of art or music or intellectual- 
ism. It is a state of mind. You have it — or not. 
Lord Leighton, who looked and dressed like a dig- 
nitary of the Church, had It. Augustus John, who 
looks and dresses like a comic-paper Bohemian, hasn't 
a touch of It. Which proves that Bohemia has noth- 
ing to do with art. So don't look for it In the stud- 
ent-world or in the Intellectual cafes. The minds of 
their people are far, far above the real Bohemian- 
ism. Soho Is as near as they get to it. And Soho 
Is done. 

There was a time when It was a foreign quarter, 
but to-day It is as much London as the Crystal 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 301 

Palace or Olympia. It has no lurking nooks; no 
inner circles. It was losing its character before the 
war, and now it has wholly lost it, and is become a 
mart. The film business hastened its destruction by 
taking over large blocks of buildings, and buying out 
little restaurants at fool-prices, and changing them 
into blaring business offices and stores reeking of 
Judea, chewing-gum and creosote. To-day Wardour 
Street, once a street of amusing little cafes and 
curio-shops is an avenue of film-offices. Instead of 
the discreet curtained window and the dish of des- 
sert, you pass swaggering windows filled with life- 
size photographs of wide-mouthed mountebanks, 
pert, look-at-me schoolgirls, and middle-aged ma- 
trons trying to represent abandoned enchantresses. 
As for the cafes that yet remain, they are, if possible, 
even more commercial in spirit than the film-offices. 
Once upon a time Greek Street, Frith Street, Dean 
Street and Old Compton Street were happy to serve 
the hard-up Journalist, the small-part actor and the 
chorus girl. You could then ramble round its blithe 
byways, and carefully choose your cafe and make 
experiments. Every month or so a new place was 
opened; sometimes to close down hurriedly, some- 
times to rise, on the stepping-stone of itself, to higher 
things — to an elaborate menu and an untrustworthy 
wine-list. Then, each cafe had its patron and pa- 
trone. If you had dined there once, M'sieu' or 
Madame, at the door, had a smile and a bow for 



302 THE LONDON SPY 

you the second time, and the third time the waiter 
remembered whether you took the fish or the ome- 
lette. They were pleased to see you, and departed 
you with graceful wishes "to the re-seeing." 

Now, nobody wants you. You cannot wander 
round and drift in a choice. The thing has become 
regulated; a function; and tables are now booked. 
Tables booked — in Soho ! The soldiers on leave dis- 
covered Soho, and brought their women to it from 
Mutton-in-the-jVIarsh; and business began to boom. 
Every dining-hour became a rush-hour. Proprietors 
and waiters had no words for new guests or old. 
If there was no table for the old guest he must go 
elsewhere. There was no arguing about it; no tact- 
ful discussion. If you attempted enquiry you were 
likely to be sworn at in Basque. They were busy, 
and there was good money in the house; a lot they 
cared about your regular patronage which had helped 
them when they were beginning. It is this floating 
but steady custom that has crushed the happy atmos- 
phere of Soho. The patron no longer regards 
his restaurant as a pleasant place, an achievement 
capping his long days of waiterhood, where he may 
sit and make friends with his customers, and con- 
gratulate them and himself on his kitchen. It is a 
business to be built up, so that he may get away from 
Soho, to Jermyn Street, and choose his clients from 
the best people. 

Rudeness was widespread in England during the 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 303 

war, but in most quarters the armistice brought 
gentler manners. Soho alone maintains its war-time 
brusquerie and impatience. They don't care whether 
you come again or not. They have no interest in 
you as an individual — only as a customer to be fed 
and presented with a bill. You may not choose your 
table as of old, they tell you to sit "there" — usually 
at a table near the hot kitchen or by the door where 
the draught enters. A certain cafe in Old Compton 
Street even insists that two diners shall sit on the 
same side of the table, not opposite each other. To 
this rudeness they have now added incompetence. 
The service is slap-dash and the food poor. The 
hard-up journalist and chorus-lady wanted value for 
their shilling. They paid attention to what they ate 
and drank, for often it was the only meal of the day. 
But Soho knows that its present clientele doesn't 
care. "Dining in Soho" is the idea, and they eat the 
indifferent food, and drink the spirituous and ex- 
pensive wines, and pay the excessive bill, without a 
murmur. And, if they don't come again, Soho doesn't 
care. There are always others. Soho knows the 
truth of the old adage — "there's one born every 
minute." 

Instead of the good value of the shilling lunch and 
the one-and-sixpenny dinner, we have the badly- 
served, carelessly-cooked dinner at four and five shill- 
ings ; and instead of the rough but decent "ordinaire," 
we have a high-priced wine list of grocer's red and 



304 THE LONDON SPY 

white wines, doctored, and wearing false labels. 
For there is no law against describing vin ordinaire 
as Margaux, or sticking the label "Beaujolais" on an 
ordinary white wine. 

Some day Soho will discover that this doesn't 
pay, and will try to get back to the old methods and 
prices. They may do that; but, alas, they will never 
recapture the old spirit. Once that is tampered with, 
it can never be adjusted. You may alter your ways, 
and repent, but if you tarnish the soul you can no 
more recover its freshness than you can recover yes- 
terday. 

Fortunately, for the modest and hard-up diner, 
for whom Providence always moves, as the old Soho 
went down, another arose in its place, in the old 
German Quarter on the North Side of Oxford Street. 
In that square made by Oxford Street, Tottenham 
Court Road, Newman Street, and Tottenham Street, 
new cafes are arising at intervals, and old German 
cafes re-appearing under Swiss management. Oh, 
yes, and the lager is coming back, and the long 
glasses, and the thin cigars. These places cherish 
the spirits of welcome and personal acquaintance 
with their customers. 

The L'Etoile, one of the older group, is my fa- 
vourite. It makes no attempt at decoration or table 
display. Its note and its cuisine are bourgeois. But 
you get there the exciting minestrone, which is a 
meal in itself; the perfect omelette, the elegant cut- 



IN THE STREETS OF DON^-CARE 305 

let, and all the cheeses in the piquant moment of 
maturity. You get, too, fresh materials, good cook- 
ing, deft service, and the affable greeting on the 
threshold. And at prices less than the prices of the 
flaring and sticky Corner Houses. Out of no ill-will 
to the proprietors, but for my own gratification, I 
hope it and the other cafes will never become popu- 
lar, for then art and suburbia will descend upon them 
and ruin them. At present they are patronised 
mainly by elderly scholars from the Museum Read- 
ing Room, and young students from Bloomsbury. 

Bloomsbury is not Bohemia, but it has a happy 
tone. The fragrance of literature hangs about the 
very stones and trees of this region of squares. The 
poets and novelists of the past are represented by 
poets and novelists of to-day; and at the gates of 
the British Museum, and its library of the past, 
stands modestly the less pretentious library of to- 
day of Mr. Mudie. Where the patrons of litera- 
ture once held their levees, now a group of publish- 
ers — so much more useful than any patron — have 
their offices. 

Bloomsbury was never, I think, so bad as it has 
been painted. Certainly it has had its up and downs, 
but vicissitude is evidence of character. From a» 
centre of the residences of what was once called the 
"nobility and gentry," it sank to letting cheap lodg- 
ings to an assorted crowd of workers and students — 
"the ignobly decent" — and characters ignoble with- 



306 THE LONDON SPY 

out decency. Then, being at the gates of Euston, 
King's Cross, and St. Pancras, it enjoyed a period 
of prosperity by its quiet and not too cheap hotels, 
in whose lounges placid old ladies wielded crochet 
needles. Now it is again in favour as a residential 
quarter, and its hotels are reiuvenated. The decent 
houses of its squares are entering their second pe- 
riod, some as town houses, others as offices of digni- 
fied businesses or learned and charitable societies. 
Its dinge, melancholy, and resigned squalor, which did 
exist, though not so densely as George Gissing be- 
lieved, are wholly gone. Belgravia has fallen down, 
but Bloomsbury has "come back." It is time for the 
novelist to give us a Bloomsbury romance. 

It is now as neat and trim as Mayfair, and its 
history is much more illustrious. The tall plane 
trees of Bedford Square are greener and more stately 
than the trees of Berkeley Square. The houses are 
fresh and carefully kept. The squares are pools of 
green light. It is preened and polished; bright with 
little hotels and gay with flower-boxes and green 
doors and shining knockers. Its straight deliberate 
streets are broken by the chatter and movement of 
the students; and in the doorways of the hotels cool- 
frocked girls sit regarding the gentle confusion of 
the traffic. 

A wondrous renascence has come particularly to 
Gower Street. In the early nineteenth century it 
was a select residential district; at the end of the 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 307 

nineteenth century it went into a decline, and its repu- 
tation became associated with that of Euston Road, 
of lodgings for the night and no questions asked. 
Its odour was rank. Then suddenly, there came a 
change. It staggered up and recovered its self-re- 
spect; and to-day it is an address of which the most 
circumspect need not be ashamed. In it are the 
homes of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins and Lady 
Diana Duff-Cooper. What a recovery! And in its 
midst are the very tents of youth — the huts of the 
India and Ceylon branch of the Y. M. C. A. where 
graciously gowned Indian girls and tailor-maid 
youths lounge or saunter; University College; and 
the magnificent hostels of two big drapery firms. 
The garret in Bloomsbury, and the starvation that 
must, by tradition, go with a garret, are legends of 
long yesterday. The young literary amateur from 
the provinces, coming to Bloomsbury, may banish 
from his memory the dim pages of "New Grub 
Street." He will not find it there. There still is a 
New Grub Street, but its inhabitants do not live in 
Bloomsbury or frequent the Museum Reading Room 
for their work. The solid article, involving research, 
is little wanted to-day; brighter stuf? — brighter and 
shorter — is what is wanted; and this is the work that 
is done in New Grub Street; this and advertisement- 
writing. 

Bohemia must be sought elsewhere. It is not 
here, nor is it in Leicester Square or in that cafe so 



308 THE LONDON SPY 

famous among the Universities. You will find many 
things there, but little that is amusing or stimulating. 
You will find there a certain deliberate schoolboy 
assumption of Bohemlanism, but nothing more. For 
a man is no more consciously a Bohemian or a 
genius than he is consciously happy or consciously 
healthy. If you discovered your true Bohemian, 
and called him to his face a Bohemian, he would in- 
dignantly repudiate the suggestion. He would af- 
firm his hatred of moral obliquity and insist on his 
respectability, and call witnesses to prove it. It is 
your mediocrity, who, to escape public indifference, 
has to dress like a member of the chorus of "La 
Boheme." The gargoyle attitude of life, which is 
triumphant here, has little to do with Bohemia, and 
good Bohemians are not now to be found there. It 
has outlived tradition and ceased to function, and is 
now merely a show-place for tourists. 

I would call it the dirtiest place In London. The 
ventilation is poor, and the evening air is thick with 
smoke and scent. The marble tables carry brown 
rings of coffee cups and spillings of beer. The wait- 
ers are slack and dispirited and none too well kempt; 
the effect, maybe, of a year's evenings among that 
company and that talk. The place suggests a woman 
in a fine evening robe and dirty finger-nails. The 
latter is a distinguishing mark of much of the com- 
pany. 

Healthy animalism finds no expression here. 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 309 

Laughter is seldom heard, and the hilarious binge is 
frowned upon. No note of youthful folly arises; 
no exuberance even in attack. All is considered and 
deliberate; a spectacle of solemn young people try- 
ing to be "different," wearing the absurd trappings 
of Murger's country, which existed only at the point 
of his pen, and trying to invoke the Russian over- 
soul with thin drinks; young men with pink socks and 
pink voices fumbling with the arts, and trying to 
forget that they came from Liverpool. Except for 
the presence of certain types of male and female, the 
place would be inexpressibly dull. But here and 
there may be seen queer creatures. There sits a her- 
maphroditic creature with side-whiskers and painted 
eyelashes, praising that dear boy Oggy for the exqui- 
site mood-values of his "Moments of Nausea." 
There are things in women's clothes that slide cun- 
ning eyes upon other women. Male dancers who 
walk like fugiti'ves from the City of the Plain. 
Hard-featured ambassadors from Lesbos and 
Sodom. These, and the pseudo-intellectuals, make 
up an atmosphere cold and flaccid. If the occasion 
were an orgy of vice, it would at least have some in- 
terest as a pathological manifestation; but it isn't. 
It is a thoroughly respectable affair, conforming to 
every point of the public code of order. The com- 
pany has neither the quick leap of the fresh youth 
nor the bold relish of the beast, but something be- 
tween; something crawling and discreet; something 



310 THE LONDON SPY 

epicene. And it Is worse because it is Intellectually 
cultivated. 

It is bad enough when It goes without brains, as 
among the painted boys and their ponces, to be seen 
In certain rendezvous in Edg^vare Road and behind 
Mayfair. You may know these places by the strong 
odour of scent when you enter them, and the ab- 
sence of women. The sweet boys stand at the 
counter, or lounge, beautifully apparelled and 
groomed, in chairs, under the wandering eyes of 
middle-aged, grey-faced men. Towards these they 
ogle and simper. But most of them were born like 
that, and they are much less offensive than those who 
combine their paederasty with poesy. 

Well, the Cafe of the Marvellous Boys isn't Bo- 
hemia. Neither art not eccentricity, neither excess 
nor wit are necessary parts of the vagabond life. 
Bohemia lies everywhere about you, except in studios, 
for these are serious workshops; you are as likely 
to find it there as behind the grille of the Bank of 
England. But you will find It in East India Dock 
Road, among the marine students; in Smithfield and 
Bermondsey, among the mad medicals; In South Ken- 
sington, among the science men; In certain houses In 
Streatham and Ilford; in Charing Cross Road and 
in Knightsbrldge. The four-ale bar Is Bohemia. 
The suburban monkey's parade Is Bohemia. Hamp- 
stcad Heath at night is Bohemia. Upper Street, 
Islington, on Saturdays, Is Bohemia. In every corner 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 311 

of the great bazaar of London the ardent shopper 
of humanity will find the stalls loaded with bunches 
of Bohemian bananas, not to be bought or bargained 
for, but to be had for the taking. The good stout 
London air is the very smell of Bohemia. 

A Frenchman, forgetful of his nation's chief qual- 
ity, said that the smell of London was beer. He was 
wrong. It is a thick, aromatic smell, certainly, but 
It cannot be so easily named. Two things that you can- 
not describe are voices and smells; and the smell of 
London defies all analysis or comparison. It is just 
London, and it is concentrated under the glass roofs 
of Euston, Marylebone, St. Pancras, Charing Cross, 
and Paddington and Waterloo, to welcome the 
stranger, as the smell of Paris welcomes him at St. 
Lazare or Gare du Nord. 

One often hears of those legendary country trip- 
pers to London, who never leave the station of their 
arrival, but spend their day there. Why should they 
go outside? Under that roof they can inhale es- 
sence of London; and if they went outside though 
they might, in a few hours, see more of London, 
they would get no keener sense of London than the 
station can supply. This station atmosphere works 
each way. It can give you as much of the spirit of the 
country and the provinces, as the places themselves, 
and I have often indulged my mood of travel with 
a few hours at one or other of our termini. In my 
hard-up time I did a vast deal of travelling without 



312 THE LONDON SI^Y 

trains. In none does the lust of travel burn more 
fiercely than in myself. I am a roamer bold and 
gay — or would be, if I had my way. But in my 
penurious days, travel was not possible, except, on 
occasion, by the kind assistance of the National 
Sunday League; so I deceived myself by a passable 
counterfeit. When the desire came upon me to quit 
my Brixton lodging, and pitch my tent under the 
walls of Teheran or Kabul, I assuaged the passion 
by visiting Poplar and the Asiatic's Home. Never 
could I rest long in one place. A glimpse in passing 
of a shipping company's posters would set up a 
yearning for travel that was only gratified by mov- 
ing to Camden Town. I have had homes in Clap- 
ham, Eltham, Balham, Bloomsbury, and Highgate. 
Oh, I've been about in my time, I tell you. I am like 
that great traveller who interrupted so frequently 
Irvin Cobb's descriptions of his European tour, with 
corrections, prompting, and amplifications of his 
own, he having made the tour year by year. Finally, 
when Cobb's best description was interjected by a 
pointless correction, Cobb turned upon the cosmo- 
politan — "Oh, all right — you tell 'em about it, Gold- 
Flsh. You've been round the globe !" 

When fares to English beauty spots were cheap, I 
could not find the money. Now that they are ex- 
pensive, I still cannot find the money. But I still 
travel. I keep Bradshaw and the A. B. C. on my 
desk, and I plan meetings at Windermere, and book 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 313 

bedrooms at the "Feathers," "Ludlow," and "The 
Lygon Arms," Broadway, and take the waters at 
Aix, and obey Mr. Thomas Cook by preparing to 
winter in Madeira. This, of course, is not my full 
programme: imagination, assisted by the printed 
page, is not sufficient to transport me into the full 
air of these places, and lend me their smell. I must 
have material contact; the senses must be fed. And 
I feed them at the big stations. By seeing the Con- 
tinental trains off at Charing Cross and Victoria, I 
am abroad. By taking a drink in a little bar in 
Drummond Street, adjoining Euston, I travel to the 
North- West and Scotland. 

Hither come old matrons, with infinite baggage 
and strange accent and behaviour, who open each 
sentence with "Ey, dear"; and at these words I am 
in the horrid wastes of Lancashire, and the stinks 
that belong to it. I meet Scottish travellers from 
Perth, smelling of dye-works, and black melancholy 
Irishmen, booked for Holyhead. I overhear their 
plans for the journey. I share their anticipated 
discomforts, and their troubles in the matter of 
sustenance, and sometimes I assist them by tipping 
the cheap sandwich shop round the corner. I learn 
from them what are the "hours of opening" in their 
corner of England. I learn that the tea at Punk- 
ton Junction is hogwash, and that Preston serves a 
champion cup of coffee. In this bar the heathery 
air of Scotch hills, the crisp air of Yorkshire, and 



314! THE LONDON SPY 

the soggy air of the Midlands are to be absorbed in 
fancy. 

If my desire is Cornwall or Somerset, I take a 
bus to a little saloon in London Street, near Padding- 
ton, where I am sure to find good company in gaiters 
and frieze coats, who will call me "myn," and talk 
in sweet, rich southern tones of the iniquities of 
London publicans who sell sweet stuff in bottles — 
yes, bottles — and call it cyder. And again I tramp 
over Exmoor, or lounge in the villages of Dorset; 
or I may smell the dreadful smell of wet coal, which 
is the smell of the Rhondda Valley; for here are 
many high-voiced, high-strung lads from South 
Wales. 

Only the other day I made a journey to Newcastle, 
via Peterboro, Lincoln, Doncaster, York, and Dur- 
ham; for, in a restaurant anigh King's Cross, I came 
upon a group of rasp-voiced men, and was drawn 
into conversation. We fell to talking of their home- 
ward journey, and as the group included natives of 
each of those towns, I was able to re-visit them. 
We talked of hotels, bars, local characters and local 
tradesmen; whether the War Memorial had yet 
been unveiled in this city; whether that horse-faced 
scoundrel was still on the magistrates' bench in that 
city; whether the manager of the Empire at t'other 
place still wore evening dress and pink socks. I 
came away with a feeling that I was returning to 
town after many weeks of provincial touring, and 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 315 

filled with fresh joy in London and the million ameni- 
ties of its streets; those streets that hold for each 
of us some sleeping beauty waiting only for our 
awakening touch; the streets of Bohemia. 

I know of but one Club in London that truly is 
Bohemian in character and style. The so-called Bo- 
hemian clubs are somewhat depressing with their 
solemn heavy furniture and their diligent boyish- 
ness. You cannot have a Bohemia with money and 
an etiquette or standard of things "done" and "not 
done" ; but these places have a lengthy code of things 
forbidden; and if a true Bohemian happens to get 
into their company they are sorely perplexed. It is 
easier to shock your professional Bohemian than to 
shock a Y. M. C. A. meeting. They profess to ac- 
cept life in all its nude manifestations ; but show them 
an ugly corner of life, and they are disturbed. They 
paint ugly things and talk about ugly things, but bring 
them face to face with concrete hideousness, and 
they turn away. They wither at an unaccustomed 
word. For at bottom they are dishonest, and their 
loves and their hates are forgeries. 

I once took, to a very advanced and rorty night- 
club that thought it was a Hell Fire Club, a thor- 
ough rapscallion whom I had picked up in St. 
Luke's; a true Bohemian who had no code or stand- 
ard of values for anything in life; a bruiser who 
had been as often in prison as in the ring; and I 
was asked not to bring him again. They hinted to 



316 THE LONDON SPY 

me that my action was ift bad taste. "Hang it all, 
you know, old man ... I mean to say . . ." 

I say I know but one Bohemian club. It is a 
night-club, but it has none of the trappings of the 
West End night-club. To get to it, you turn from St. 
Bride Street up an alley, and turn down another 
alley, and a small door admits you into a large bare- 
floored room with bar and tables. It is the News- 
paper Worker's Club, chiefly for the printing sec- 
tion, but also used by members of editorial staffs. 
The bar opens at eleven P. m. and remains open till 
four in the morning; and meals are served at all 
times. 

Better meals in value than any West End supper- 
club will give you; right nourishing meals at prices 
that astonish. Well, you can sup splendidly there for 
a shilling. Its soup is as good as mother makes, 
and its atmosphere is an atmosphere of mateyness 
and rich rude pleasantry. At about one in the morn- 
ing it is most busy. Then troop in the men from 
the printing departments of the dailies, and things 
become amusing. The printer's vocabulary, by his 
calling, is extensive and apt, and his language makes 
even sergeant-majors feel inept and small. Stories 
float about, and snuff is taken. Downstairs are an- 
other bar and two billiards-tables, and Ted (I'm not 
sure if it's still Ted), who command affairs. The 
appointments are simple and rough, but this place 
has all that a club should have in social facilities and 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 317 

diversions. Many midnight hours have I spent 
there when all other doors were closed; and many an 
air-raid night passed Bohemianly in that basement 
with one of Ted's schooners before me, and Ted and 
a group of members round the billiards-table or with 
the darts. 

It has no motto, no "note," and its annual sub- 
scription is about the price of a Strand lun&h. 
(Which reminds me that I haven't paid mine for 
over three years.) There, you may do what you 
like, and be truly yourself, and let others be them- 
selves; and if you are told, as I have been told, that 
if you can't — well play — billiards, why don't you — 
well give up the — table to those who — well can, you 
will see the justice of the rebuke and make way, and 
return flourish for flourish — all in the friendliest 
spirit. You are under no restraint whatever. Don't 
think that I am approving bad language or too-easy 
behaviour. I am only thinking that we have 
enough restraint at every turn of our over-governed 
lives, and that a club should be the one place where 
restraint is eased and conduct given free play — for 
good or ill. 

But, oh, dear! suppose you spoke your mind in 
plain terms at the Studio Club in Regent Street (a 
very arty affair) or the Hambone Club in Ham 
Yard, a futurist den, where impromptu concerts are 
supposed to beguile the midnight hours. I'm sure 
you would be asked to leave. But I don't think 



318 THE LONDON SPY 

you'd lose much. Those concerts — they speak rather 
of local talent in the Corn Exchange. I prefer my 
little cafe near Great Queen Street, the Cafe of the 
Forlorn. It is really a working-men's eating-house, 
but other than working-men use it. You will find 
there no bright names, no "coming" men or success- 
ful artists. It is the rendezvous of the Failures, 
and is happier and more stimulating than any gath- 
ering-place of well-knowns. It has no concerts, no 
"art" frescoes, no dancing, no hambones. But it 
has a warm, kindly atmosphere, and you may there 
have ripe talk with sound intelligences. 

It is near Bruce House, the L. C. C. apartment- 
block; and to it come the impoverished scholars and 
poor gentlemen of letters from their municipal lodg- 
ing. They are not regular customers: for they are 
the real Bohemians for whom there are days when 
they must dine with the sparrows. But when there 
is a good time and two or three of them are there, 
taking a cut from the joint and two veg., you will 
be in rare company. Friendless and battered, they 
can produce among themselves more merriment and 
true delight than twenty studio clubs. Each is a 
character, and each maintains that character. 

One famous and successful man is much like an- 
other. In the achieving of success or fame, men 
seem to shed something of personality and angles. 
In securing the bone, they lose the enduring shadow. 
They are stamped and marked, like pieces of plate. 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 319 

But the failures remain themselves. They have 
quaint twists of character. They talk better and 
more freely than the famous. They have nothing 
to hide, and nothing to fear. They do not strive to 
flatter and placate you. They do not quail at giving 
offence if honesty compels it. Asking nothing of 
the world, they are, by general understanding, ex- 
empt from the world's petty observances and reti- 
cences. They will tell you the truth about them- 
selves, or about yourself, without suppression or 
demur; and if you offer them money they accept it 
openly and casually, with a nod. 

In that eating-house, or in the adjacent saloon, I 
have sat often among them, and heard great argu- 
ment. Possessing abilities in large measure, they have 
no capacity for applying them. One is a poet, one an 
advertisement-writer (though seldom in work, being 
unreliable in delivery of copy) , one a fiction-writer, 
and one a Doctor of Divinity. All are scholars and 
good talkers; and such talk passes between them that 
often old Jack, the owner of the eating-house, will 
lounge against one of the pews and listen to them, 
interested and perplexed. He doesn't quite know 
what to make of them, but there is a nice distinction 
between his manner towards them and his manner 
to his reg'lars, the draymen and lorrymen. He rec- 
ognises that they are "out of the ordinary." He 
asked me once who they were, and I said I thought 
they were journalists. 



320 THE LONDON SPY 

"Journalists — ah ! I thought they must be some- 
thing. I don't understand everything they talk, 
about, but I could sit and listen to 'em for hours. 
That white-'aired one — the way 'e spouts — on and 
on — never at a loss for a word, like, is 'e?" 

I first met them through the advertisement-writer. 
I was sitting alone one evening in a Drury Lane 
tavern, watching the only other customer. He was 
a dim, seedy, smudgy fellow, looking the worse for 
the flotsam of decency that hung about him; and he 
intensified his rusty clothes, which were just not 
ragged, by drawing from his sleeve a spotless pocket- 
handkerchief. When he had used this and drained 
his tankard, looking deeply Into it, and sighing, he 
looked at me and spoke : 

*Prmm ! As the poet says *Go look into a pewter- 
pot to see the world as the world's not.' " 

"Poet?" I said. Then my mind took a quick leap, 
and saved me. "Oh . . . 'Shropshire Lad.' Might 
I help you to see a little more of the world?" 

"Why, you seem to be an intelligent young man. 
It would give me pleasure, sir, to drink with you 
at your charge." 

I passed the appropriate compliment, and ordered 
two. Then leaving his untouched, he fell to dis- 
cussing the state of the world to-day and its trend, 
with allusions to Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Goethe, 
and Bergson. He filled a grimy clay pipe with as- 
sorted shreds of tobacco which he fished piecemeal 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 321 

from his pocket, lit it, and between puffs, jerked out 
reflective sentences on the Over-Soul, The four-ale 
bar was beginning to fill. The crowd mumbled of 
football and the spring weights. The barmaid sim- 
pered or snapped, varying her manner to the cus- 
tomer: and through the rumble my gentleman went 
steadily on. Emerson ... St. Augustine . . . 
Rousseau . . . Voltaire . . . 

Then another wreck joined us. He had the face 
and figure of Edward Grieg, and was, I learned 
later, the poet, who wrote rhymes for the facetious 
papers. 

"Ah, Bilton. Any luck?" 

The white hair shook. 

"Nor here, either. Damn the lot of 'em — fat- 
faced troglodytes. I have just had the good luck 
of drinking with my young friend here — and that's 
all. And even with him I'm not very lucky. I try 
to stir him with Carlylean denunciations of the times 
and he says nothing. But I think if you invited him, 
he would join you In a drink at his expense. I tried 
it, and it came off." 

That was the beginning of four amusing hours. 
Soon, others of their party came in, and with the 
arrival of each I was indicated as the host. 

"I have had the good fortune, Davy, to make a 
friend of a young man with money. Come — let 
us spoil him." 

It was a meeting of the Jolly Beggars — and was 



322 THE LONDON SPY 

the beginning of a casual acquaintance which has 
meant much delight for me. 

Here are the true Bohemians, living In the true 
Bohemia. They wear soiled linen, not for fun or 
for distinction, but because they cannot get clean 
linen. They are often unshaven, not from cult or 
negligence, but because shaves cost money. They 
would delight in a clean change every day, In Sa- 
vlle Row clothes, and goodly restaurants, and sound 
Burgundies and well-furnished homes, in place of 
their shabbiness, their eating-house, their half-pint of 
stout, and their L. C. C. room. But, had they all 
these things, they would still be Bohemians. They 
have the right spirit. 

It is among men like these that you will find that 
spirit. You will find It at the meetings of the East 
Ham Cage-Bird Society. You will find It at the 
Annual Outing of the Barnsbury Licensed Victual- 
lers' Association. You will find It at Alexandra Park, 
where, upon occasions, the huskies and rough-necks 
of the town gather round that corrugated asphalt 
called the Turf. You will find it at the dinners of 
the Ice Cream Retailers' Association. You will find 
it at the New Year Festival of the Dalston Dahlia 
and Chrysanthemum Society. You will find It at the 
dinners of the Antediluvian Order of Great Elks, of 
Druids and Buffaloes. You will find It in Upper St. 
Martin's Lane, outside Aldrldge's where the taxi- 
men join the horse-and-harness men over basins of 



IN THE STREETS OF DON'T-CARE 323 

stewed eels. You will find it at the Monthly Socials 
of the Street Traders' Brotherhood; and you will 
find it in good measure at the in-aid-of meeting of 
any benevolent fraternity, where there is "roast" at 
one end of the table and "boiled" at the other, and 
where the canakin clinks, and good fellowship and 
hearty quarrels go hand in hand. 

"Mister Chairman, I wish to report that the 
genelman on my right has used an offensive expres- 
sion." 

"Siddown! Siddown!" 

"If 'e says it again, 'e'll get my tankard in 'is 
chops." 

"Siddown! Lessave a song from old George. 
Come on, George." 

"I bin in the business forty years now, and I ain't 
gointer be told that — " 

"Siddown, yeh fool. Somebody pull 'is coat-tails. 
Where's old George? Come on, George — The Tar- 
paulin JacketV 

" 'E ain't got no right to say — " 

"Will yeh SIDDOWN, Gubbins ! We don't wan- 
cher. We want old George !" 

"Not until 'e takes it back!" 

"Mr. Chairman, I rise to 'pologise. I take It 
back. I oughter known better than dispute with a 
man old enough to be me farver." 

"Old enough to be yer — " 

"Nah stop it — you've 'ad yer 'pology. Jus' 'ave 



324. THE LONDON SPY 

a drink together and fergit it. We come 'ere fer 
peace and quietness. Now, altogether boys: 

There is a tavern in the tozvn, 
In the Town!" 

And Mr. Gubbins and his offender see each other 
home, in glorious amity, through the midnight alleys 
of Bohemia. 



THE END 



UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 

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