Chapter II: Part 2

There is always an acrobat turn in the Oxford bill, and always a cheery cross-talk item. The old combination of knockabouts or of swell and clown has for the most part disappeared; the Poluskis, The Terry Twins, and Dale and O'Malley are perhaps the last survivors. The modern idea is the foolish fellow and the dainty lady, who are not, I think, so attractive as the old style. Personally, I am always drawn to a hall where Dale and O'Malley are billed. "The somewhat different comedians" is their own description of themselves, and the wonder is that they should have worked so long in partnership and yet succeeded in remaining "somewhat different." But each has so welded his mood to the other that their joint humour is, as it were, a bond as spiritually indissoluble as matrimony. You cannot conceive either Mr. Dale or Mr. O'Malley working alone or with any other partner. I have heard them crack the same quips and tell the same stories for the last five years, yet they always get the same big laugh and the same large "hand." That is a delightful trait about the music-hall--the _entente_ existing between the performer and audience. The favourites seem to be _en rapport_ even while waiting in the wings, and the flashing of their number in the electric frame is the signal for a hand of welcome and--in the outer halls--whistles and cries. The atmosphere becomes electric with good-fellowship. It is, as Harry Lauder used to sing, "just like being at home." It must be splendid to be greeted in that manner every night of your life and--if you are working two or three halls--five times every night; to know that some one wants you, that some one whom you have never seen before loves you and is ready to pay good money away in order to watch you play the fool or be yourself. There they are, crowds of people with whom you haven't the slightest acquaintance, all familiar with you, all longing to meet you again, and all applauding you before you have done anything but just walk on. They shout "Good Boy!" or "Bravo, Harry!" or George, or Ernest. It must indeed be splendid. You are all so--what is the word?--matey, isn't it? Yes, that's the note of the London hall--mateyness. You, up there, singing or dancing, have brought men and women together as nothing else, not even the club or saloon bar, can do; and they sit before you, enjoying you and themselves and each other. Strangers have been known to speak to one another under the mellow atmosphere which you have created by singing to them of the universal things: love, food, drink, marriage, birth, death, misfortune, festival, cunning, frivolity and--oh, the thousand things that make up our daily day.

There is just one man still among us who renders these details of the Cockney's daily day in more perfect fashion than any of his peers. He is of the old school, I admit, but he is nevertheless right on the spot with his points and his psychology. His name is Harry Champion. Perhaps you have seen him and been disgusted with what you would call the vulgarity of his songs. But what you call his vulgarity, my dears, is just everyday life; and everyday life is always disgusting to the funny little Bayswaterats, who are compact of timidity and pudibonderie. The elderly adolescent has no business at the music-hall; his place is the Baptist Chapel or some other place remote from all connection with this splendid world of London, tragic with suffering and song, high endeavour and defeat. It is people of this kidney who find Harry Champion vulgar. His is the robust, Falstaffian humour of old England, which, I am glad to think, still exists in London and still pleases Londoners, in spite of efforts to Gallicize our entertainments and substitute obscenity and the salacious leer for honest fun and the frank roar of laughter. If you want to hear the joy of living interpreted in song and dance, then go to the first hall where the name of Harry Champion is billed, and hear him sing "Boiled Beef and Carrots," "Baked Sheep's Heart stuffed with Sage and Onions," "Whatcher, me Old Brown Son!" "With me old Hambone," "William the Conqueror," "Standard Bread." If you are sad, you will feel better. If you are suicidal, you will throw the poison away, and you will not be the first man whose life has been saved by a low comedian. You may wonder why this eulogy of food in all these songs. The explanation is simple. In the old days, the music-hall was just a drinking den, and all the jolly songs were in praise of drink. Now that all modern halls are unlicensed, and are, more or less, family affairs to which Mr. Jenkinson may bring the wife and the children, and where you can get nothing stronger than non-alcoholic beers, or dry ginger, the Bacchanalian song is out of place. Next to drinking, of course, the Londoner loves eating. Mr. Harry Champion, with the insight of genius, has divined this, and therefore he sings about food, winning much applause, personal popularity, and, I hope, much money.

Watch his audience as he sings. Mark the almost hypnotic hold he has over them; not only over pit and gallery but over stalls as well, and the well-groomed loungers who have just dropped in. I defy any sane person to listen to "Watcher, me Old Brown Son!" without chortles of merriment, profound merriment, for you don't laugh idly at Harry Champion. His gaiety is not the superficial gaiety of the funny man who makes you laugh but does nothing else to you. He does you good. I honestly believe that his performance would beat down the frigid steel ramparts that begird the English "lady." His songs thrill and tickle you as does the gayest music of Mozart. They have not the mere lightness of merriment, but, like that music, they have the deep-plumbing gaiety of the love of life, for joy and sorrow.

But let us leave the front of the house and wander in back of a typical hall. Here is an overcharged atmosphere, feverish of railway-station. There is an entire lack of any system; everything apparently confused rush. Artists dashing out for a second house many miles away. Artists dashing in from their last hall, some fully dressed and made-up, others swearing at their dressers and dragging baskets upstairs, knowing that they have three minutes in which to dress and make-up before their call. As one rushes in with a cheery "Evening, George!" to the stage-door keeper, he is met by the "boy"--the "boy" being usually a middle-aged ex-Army man of 45 or 50.

"Mr. Merson's on, sir."

"Righto!"

He dashes into his dressing-room, which he shares with three others, and then it is _Vesti la giubba_.... The dressing-room is a long, narrow room, with a slab running the length of the wall, and four chairs. The slab is backed by a long, low mirror, and is littered with make-up tins and pots. His dresser hurls himself on the basket, as though he owed it a grudge. He tears off the lid. He dives head foremost into a foam of trousers, coats, and many-coloured shirts. He comes to the surface breathless, having retrieved a shapeless mass of stuff. He tears pieces of this stuff apart, and flings them, with apparent malice, at his chief, and, somehow, they seem to stay where he flings them. The chief shouts from a cloud of orange wig and patchwork shirt for a soda-and-milk, and from some obscure place of succour there actually appears a soda-and-milk. A hand darts from the leg of a revolving pair of trousers, grabs the glass and takes a loud swig. The boy appears at the door.

"Mr. Merson coming off, sir!"

"Right-_o_! and blast you!"

"No good blasting me, sir!"

From far away, as from another world, he hears the murmur of a large body of people, the rolling of the drum, the throbbing of the double-bass, the wail of the fiddles, sometimes the thud of the wooden-shoe dancer, and sometimes a sudden silence as the music dims away to rubbish for the big stunt of the trapeze performer.

He subsides into a chair. The dresser jams a pair of side-spring boots on his feet while he himself adjusts the wig and assaults his face with sticks of paint.

The boy appears again. He shoots his bullet head through the door, aggressively. "Mr. Benson, _please_!" This time he is really cross. Clearly he will fight Mr. Benson before long.

But Mr. Benson dashes from his chair and toddles downstairs, and is just in time to slip on as the band finishes his symphony for the fourth time. Once on, he breathes more freely, for neglect of the time-sheet is a terrible thing, and involves a fine. If your time is 8.20, it is your bounden duty to be in the wings ready to go on at 8.17; otherwise ... trouble and blistering adjectives.

While he is on the boy is chasing round the dressing-rooms for the "next call." This happens to be a black-face comedian, who is more punctual than Mr. Benson. He is all in order, and at the call: "Mr. Benson's on, Harry!" he descends and stands in the wings, watching with cold but friendly gaze the antics of Mr. Benson, and trying to sense the temper of the house. Mr. Benson is at work. In another minute he will be at work, too. Mr. Benson is going well--he seems to have got the house. He wonders whether he will get the house--or the bird. He is about to give us something American: to sing and dance to syncopated melody. America may not have added great store to the world's music, but at least she has added to the gaiety of nations. She has given us ragtime, the voice of the negroid Bacchus, which has flogged our flagging flesh to new sensations; she has given us songs fragrant of Fifth Avenue, and with the wail of the American South; and she has given us nigger comedians. Harry doesn't much care whether he "goes" or not. They are a philosophical crowd, these Vaudevillians. If one of them gets the bird, he has the sympathy of the rest of the bill. Rotten luck. If he goes well, he has their smiles. Of course, there are certain jealousies here as in every game; but very few. You see, they never know.... The stars never know when their reign will end, and they, who were once bill-toppers, will be shoved in small type in obscure corners of the bill at far-distant provincial halls. That is why the halls, like journalism, is such a great game. You never know.... The unhappiest of the whole bill of a hall are "first call" and "last call"; nobody is there to listen to "first call"; everybody has bolted by the time "last call" is on. Only the orchestra and the electricians remain. They, like the poor, are always with them.

After the show, the orchestra usually breaks up into parties for a final drink, or sometimes fraternizes with the last call and makes a bunch for supper at Sam Isaacs'. After supper, home by the last cart to Camberwell or Camden Town, seeking--and, if not too full of supper, finding--a chaste couch at about two a.m. The star, of course, does nothing so vulgar. He motors home to Streatham or St. John's Wood or Clapham Common, and plays billiards or cards until the small hours. A curious wave of temperance lately has been sweeping over the heads of the profession, and a star seldom has a drink until after the show. The days are gone when the lion comique would say: "No, laddie, I don't drink. Nothing to speak of, that is. I just have ten or twelve--just enough to make me think I'm drunk. Then I keep on until I think I'm sober. Then I _know_ I'm drunk!" They are beginning, unfortunately for their audiences, to take themselves seriously. This is a pity, for the more spontaneous and inane they are, the more they are in their place on the vaudeville stage. There is more make-believe and hard work on the halls to-day, and I think they are none the better for it. As soon as art becomes self-conscious, its end is near; and that, I am afraid, is what is happening to-day. A quieter note has crept into the whole thing, a more facile technique; and if you develop technique you must develop it at the expense of every one of those more robust and essential qualities. The old entertainers captured us by deliberate unprovoked assault on our attention. But to-day they do not take us by storm. They woo us and win us slowly, by happy craft; and though your admiration is finally wrung from you, it is technique you are admiring--nothing more. All modern art--the novel, the picture, the play, the song--is dying of technique.

I have only the very slightest acquaintance with those gorgeous creatures--the L200 a week men--who top the bill to-day; only the acquaintance of an occasional drink in their rooms. But I have known, and still know, many of the rank and file, and delightful people they are. As a boy of fifteen, I remember meeting, on a seaside front, a member of a troupe then appearing called The Boy Guardsmen. He was a sweet child. Fourteen years old he was, and he gave me cigarettes, and he drank rum and stout, and was one of the most naive and cleanly simple youths I ever met. He had an angelic trust in the good of everything and everybody. He worshipped me because I bought him a book he wanted. He believed that the ladies appearing in the same bill at his hall were angels. He loved the manager of his troupe as a great-hearted gentleman. He thought his sister was the most radiant and high-souled girl that Heaven had yet sent to earth. And it was his business to sing, twice nightly, some of the smuttiest songs I have heard on any stage. Yet he knew exactly why the house laughed, and what portions of the songs it laughed at. He knew that the songs went because they were smutty, yet such was his innocence that he could not understand why smut should not be laughed at. He was a dear!

There was another family whom I still visit. Father and Mother are Comedy Acrobats and Jugglers. Night by night they appear in spangled tights, and Father resins his hands in view of the audience, and lightly tosses the handkerchief to the wings; and then bends a stout knee, and cries "Hup!" and catches Mumdear on the spring and throws her in a double somersault. There are two girls of thirteen and fifteen, and a dot of nine; and they regard Dad and Mumdear just as professional pals, never as parents. This is Dad's idea; he dislikes being a father, but he enjoys being an elder brother, and leading the kids on in mischief or jolly times.

I was having drinks one Saturday night, after the show, with Dad, in a scintillating Highbury saloon, when there was a sudden commotion in the passage. A cascade of voices; a chatter of feet; the yelping of a dog.

"What's that?" I murmured, half interested.

"Only the bother and the gawdfers," he answered.

"Eh?"

"I said it's the bother and the gawdfers.... Rhyming slang, silly ass. The Missus and the kids. Bother-and-strife ... wife. Gawd-forbids ... kids. See? Here they come. No more mouth-shooting for us, now."

They came. Mumdear came first--very large, submerged in a feather boa and a feathered hat! salmon pink as to the bust, cream silk as to the skirt. The kids came next, two of the sweetest, merriest girls I know. Miss Fifteen simply tumbled with brown curls and smiles; she was of The Gay Glowworms, a troupe of dancers. Miss Thirteen tripped over the dog and entered with a volley of giggles and a tempest of light stockinged legs, which spent themselves at once when she observed me. In a wink she became the demure maiden. She had long, straight hair to the waist, and the pure candour of her face gave her the air of an Italian madonna. She was of The Casino Juveniles. We had met before, so she sidled up to me and inquired how I was and what's doing. Within half a minute I was besieged by tossing hair and excited hands, and an avalanche of talk about shop, what they were doing, where they were this week, where next, future openings, and so forth; all of which was cut short by the good-humouredly gruff voice of the landlord, inquiring--

"That young lady over fourteen?"

"Well ... er ... she looks it, don't she?" said Dad.

"Dessay she does. But is she?"

"Well ... tell you the truth, Ernest, she ain't. But she will be soon."

"Well, she can come back then. But she's got to go now."

"Righto! Come on, Joyce. You got the bird. Here, Maudie, take her home. Both of you. Straight home, mind. And get the supper ready. And don't forget to turn the dog out. And here--get yourselves some chocolates, little devils." He pulled out a handful of silver. "There you are--all the change I've got."

He gave Maudie four shillings, and Joyce half a crown--for chocolates; and Maudie tripped out with flustered hair and laughing ribbons, and Joyce fell over the dog, and the swing-doors caught her midwise, and there was a succession of screams fainting into the distance, and at last silence.

"Thank God they're gone, bless the little devils!" And Dad raised his dry ginger in salutation; while Mumdear allowed me to get her a port-and-lemonade. It had apparently been a stiff show.

"Funny, but ... if you notice it ... when one thing goes wrong everything goes. First off, Arthur wasn't there to conduct. His leader had to take first three turns, and he doesn't know us properly and kept missing the cues for changes. See, we have about six changes in our music, and when you kind of get used to doing a stunt to 'Mysterious Rag,' it sort of puts you off if the band is still doing 'Nights of Gladness.' See? Then the curtain stuck, and we was kept hanging about for a minute, and had to speed up. Then one of our ropes give, and I thought to myself: 'That's put the fair old khybosh on it, that has.' Gave me--well, you know, put me a bit nervy, like. We missed twice. Least, George says I missed, but I say he did. So one thing and another it's been a bad night. However, we went all right, so here's doing it again, sonny. Thumbs up!"

She beamed upon me a very large stage beam, as though she had got the range of the gallery and meant to reach it. But it was sincere, and though she makes three of me, she is a darling, very playful, very motherly, very strong-minded. Indeed, a Woman. She fussed with the feathers of her boa, and sat upright, as though conscious of her athletic proportions and the picture she was making against the gilded background of the saloon. She had an arm that--but I can say no more than that paraphrase of Meredith: She Had An Arm. When you remember that often four times nightly she holds her husband--no light-weight, I assure you--balanced on her right, while, with her left, she juggles with a bamboo-table and a walking-stick, you can realize that She Has An Arm, and you can understand the figure she cuts in commonplace intercourse. You are simply overwhelmed physically and morally.

"But look here, sonny, why not come home and have a bit of supper with us? That is, if there is any. But come round, and gnaw the old hambone--what? I think we got some claret and I know George's got a drop of Three-Star. Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern tour with the White Bird Company, so of course we're in a devil of muddle. George's sister's round there, packing her. But if you'll put up with the damned old upset, why, come right along."

So we drank up, and I went right along to a jolly little flat near Highbury Quadrant. As we entered the main room, I heard a high, thin voice protesting--

But there were times, dear,
When you made me feel so bad!

And there, flitting about the room in dainty lace petticoat, and little else, was young Beryl, superintending her aunt's feverish struggles with paint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk stockings, socks, and wraps, snatching these articles from a voluminous wardrobe and tossing them, haphazard, into a monumental dressing-basket, already half-full with two life-size teddy-bears.

She was a bright little maid, and, though we had not met before, we made friends at once. She had a mass of black curls, eyes dancing with elfin lights, a face permanently flushed, and limbs never in repose. She was, even in sleep--as I have seen her since--wonderfully alive, with that hectic energy that is born of spending oneself to the last ounce unceasingly; in her case, the magnetic, self-consuming energy of talent prematurely developed. Her voice had distinctive quality, unusual in little girls of nine. When she talked, it was with perfect articulation and a sense of the value and beauty of words. Her manners were prettily wayward, but not precocious. She moved with the quiet self-possession of one who has something to do and knows just how to do it, one who took her little self seriously but not conceitedly.

On the stage she has been the delight of thousands. Her gay smile, her delicate graces, and her calm, unfaltering stage manner have touched the hearts of all sorts and conditions, from boxes to bar. Eight times a week, six evenings and two matinees, she was booked to take the stage from the rise of the curtain and leave it for scarcely more than two minutes at a time until the fall. This was by no means her first show. Before that she had been pantomime fairy, orphan child in melodrama, waif in a music-hall sketch, millionaire's pet in a Society play, a mischievous boy in a popular farce, dancer in a big ballet, and now the lead in a famous fairy play, at a salary of ten pounds a week. No wonder Dad and Mumdear, and even the elder girls, regarded her with a touch of awe and worship. But feted as she is, she has never been spoilt; and she remains, in spite of her effervescent life, a genuine child. The pet of the crowd behind the scenes, the pet of the house in front, she is accustomed, every night, to salvoes of applause, to flowers left at the stage-door, and to boxes of chocolates handed over the footlights. Night after night, in dance or make-believe of life, she spends herself to exhaustion for the pleasure of the multitude; night after night, in a tinsel-world of limelight and grease-paint, she plays at being herself.

I rather wondered what she thought of it all, and whether she enjoyed it; but, like most little girls, she was shy of confidences. Perhaps she wondered at it all, perhaps sometimes she felt very tired of it all--the noise, the dust, the glamour, and the rush. But she would not admit it. She would only admit her joy at the ten pounds a week, out of which Mumdear would be able to send her favourite cousin Billie to the seaside. So I had to leave it at that, and help with the packing; and at about a quarter to one in the morning supper was announced as ready, and we all sat down.

I forget what we ate. There was some mystery of eggs, prepared by Joyce and Maudie. There were various preserved meats, and some fruit, and some Camembert, and some very good Sauterne, to all of which you helped yourself. There was no host or hostess. You just wandered round the table, and forked what you wanted, and ate it, and then came up for more. When we had done eating, Dad brought out a bottle of excellent old brandy, and Joyce and Maudie made tea for the ladies, and Beryl sat on my knee until half-past two and talked scandal about the other members of the White Bird Company.

At three o'clock I broke up a jolly evening, and departed, Maudie and Joyce accompanying me to Highbury Corner, where I found a vagrant cab.

Perhaps after the cleansing of the London stage, its most remarkable feature is this sudden invasion of it by the child. There has been much foolish legislation on the subject, but, though it is impossible artistically to justify the presence of children in drama, I think I would not have them away. I think they have given the stage, professionally, something that it is none the worse for.

All men, of course, are actors. In all men exists that desire to escape from themselves, to be somebody else, which is expressed, in the nursery, by their delight in "dressing up," and, in later life, by their delight in watching others pretend. But the child is the most happy actor, for to children acting is as natural as eating, and their stage work always convinces because they never consciously act--never, that is, aim at preconceived effects, but merge their personalities wholly in this or that idea and allow themselves to be driven by it. When to this common instinct is added an understanding of stage requirements and a sharp sense of the theatre, the result is pure delight. We live in a little age, and, in the absence of great figures, we are perhaps prone to worship little things, and especially to cultivate to excess the wonder-child and often the pseudo-wonder-child. But the gifted stage-children have a distinct place, for they give us no striving after false quantities, no theatricality, and their effects are in proportion to the strength of their genius. Of course, when they are submitted to the training of a third-rate manager, they become mere mechanical dolls, full of shrill speech and distorted posings that never once touch the audience. You have examples of this in any touring melodrama. These youngsters are taught to act, to model themselves on this or that adult member of the company, are made conscious of an audience, and are carefully prevented from being children. The result is a horror. The child is only an effective actor so long as it does not "act." As soon as these youngsters reach the age of fifteen or sixteen the dramatic faculty is stilled, and lies dormant throughout adolescence. They are useless on the stage, for, beginning to "find themselves," they become conscious artists, and, in the theatrical phrase, it doesn't come off. It is hardly to be expected that it should, for acting, of all the arts, most demands a knowledge of the human mind which cannot be encompassed even by genius at seventeen. That is why no child can ever play such a part as that of the little girl in Hauptmann's "Hannele." Intuition could never cover it. Nor should children ever be set to play it. The child of melodrama is an impossibility and an ugliness. Children on the stage must be childish, and nothing else. They must not be immature men and women. Superficially, of course, as I have said, every child of talent becomes world-weary and sophisticated; the bright surface of the mind is dulled with things half-perceived. But this, the result of moving in an atmosphere of hectic brilliance, devoid of spiritual nourishment, is not fundamental: it is but a phase. Old-fashioned as the idea may be, it is still true that artificial excitement is useful, indeed necessary, to the artist; and conditions of life that would spoil or utterly destroy the common person are, to him, entirely innocuous, since he lives on and by his own self. And, though some stage children may become prematurely wise, in the depths of their souls, they must preserve, fresh and lovely, the child-spirit, the secret glory shared by all children. If they lose that they have justification of any kind.

There was a little girl on the London stage some few years ago whom I have always remembered with joy. I first saw her accidentally at a Lyceum pantomime, into which I strolled after a dull evening in Fleet Street.

The theatre was drowned in a velvet gloom. Here and there sharp lamps stung the dusks. There was a babble of voices. The lights of the orchestra gleamed subtly. The pit was a mist of lilac, which shifted and ever shifted. A chimera of fetid faces swam above the gallery rail. Wave after wave of lifeless heads rolled on either side of me.

Then there was a quick bell; the orchestra blared the chord on, and I sat up. Something seemed about to happen. Back at the bar was a clamour of glass and popping cork, and bashful cries of "Order, please!" The curtain rushed back on a dark, blank stage. One perceived, dimly, a high sombre draping, very far upstage. There was silence. Next moment, from between the folds, stole a wee slip of a child in white, who stood, poised like a startled fawn. Three pale spot-limes swam uncertainly from roof and wings, drifted a moment, then picked her up, focusing her gleaming hair and alabaster arms. I looked at the programme.

It was Marjorie Carpenter.

The conductor tapped. A tense silence; and then our ears were drenched in the ballet music of Delibes. Over the footlights it surged, and, racing down-stage, little Marjorie Carpenter flung herself into it, caressing and caressed by it, shaking, as it seemed, little showers of sound from her delighted limbs. On that high, vast stage, amid the crashing speed of that music and the spattering fire of the side-drums, she seemed so frail, so lost, so alone that--oh! one almost ached for her.

But then she danced: and if she were alone at first, she was not now alone. She seemed at a step to people the stage with little companies of dream.

I say she danced, and I must leave it at that. She gave us more than dance; she gave us the spirit of Childhood, bubbling with delight, so fresh, so contagious that I could have wept for joy of it. It was a thing of sheer lyrical loveliness, the lovelier, perhaps, because of its very waywardness and disregard of values. Here was no thing of trick and limelight. It was Blake's "Infant Joy" materialized. She was a poem.

In the heated theatre, where the opiate air rolled like a fog, we sat entranced before her--the child, elfish and gay and hungry for the beauty of life; the child, lit by a glamorous light. Far below the surface this light burns, and seldom is its presence revealed, save by those children who live very close to Nature: gipsy and forest children. But every child possesses it, whether bred in the whispering wood or among sweetstuff shops and the Highbury 'buses; and I, for one, recognized it immediately this lovely child carried it over the footlights of the Lyceum Theatre.

Hither and thither she drifted like a white snowflake, but all the time ... dancing; and one had a sense of dumb amazement that so frail a child, her fair arms and legs as slender as a flower-stem, should so fill that stage and hold the rapt attention of a theatreful of people. Here was evidence of something stronger than mere mastery of ballet technique. Perfect her dancing was. There was no touch of that automatic movement so noticeable in most child dancers. When she went thus or so, or flitted from side to side of the stage, she clearly knew just why she did it, why she went up-stage instead of down. But she had more than mere technical perfection: she had personality, that strange, intangible something so rare in the danseuse, that wanders over the footlights. The turn of a foot, the swift side look, the awakening smile, the nice lifting of an eyebrow--these things were spontaneous. No amount of rehearsal or managerial thought could have produced effects so brilliantly true to the moment.

I am not exaggerating. I am speaking quite literally when I say that, for me, at that time, Marjorie Carpenter and her dancing were the loveliest things in London. She danced as no child has ever danced before or since, though, of course, it would never do to say so. It was the most fragile, most evanescent genius that London had seen; and nobody cared, nobody recognized it. It attracted no more attention that the work of any other child-actress. Yet you never saw such gazelle-like swiftness and grace.

When she had completed one dance, a new back-cloth fell, and she danced again and yet again. I forget what she danced, but it spoke to me of a thousand forgotten things of childhood. I know that I touched finger-tips with something more generously pure and happy than I had met for years. Through the hush of lights the sylvan music stole, and Marjorie Carpenter stole with it, and every step of her whispered of April and May.

The curtain fell. I was jerked back to common things. But I was in no mood for them. The house applauded. It thought it was applauding Marjorie Carpenter for her skill as a dancer. It was really worshipping something greater--that elusive quality which she had momentarily snatched from nothing and presented to them: the eternal charm and mystery of Childhood.

A CHINESE NIGHT

LIMEHOUSE

_AT LIMEHOUSE_

_Yellow man, yellow man, where have you been?
Down the Pacific, where wonders are seen.
Up the Pacific, so glamorous and gay,
Where night is of blue, and of silver the day._

_Yellow man, yellow man, what did you there?
I loved twenty maids who were loving and fair.
Their cheeks were of velvet, their kisses were fire,
I looked at them boldly and had my desire._

_Yellow man, yellow man, what do you know?
That living is lovely wherever I go;
And lovelier, I say, since when soft winds have passed
The tides will race over my bosom at last._

_Yellow man, yellow man, why do you sigh?
For flowers that are sweet, and for flowers that die.
For days in fair waters and nights in strange lands.
For faces forgotten and little lost hands._

A CHINESE NIGHT

LIMEHOUSE

It was eight o'clock. We had dined in Soho, and conversed amiably with Italian waiters and French wine-men. There were now many slack hours before us, and nothing wherewith to tighten them. We stood in the low-lit gaiety of Old Compton Street, and wondered. We were tired of halls and revues; the theatres had started work; there was nothing left but to sit in beer-cellars and listen to dreary bands playing ragtimes and bilious waltzes.

Now it is a good tip when tired of the West, and, as the phrase goes, at a loose end, to go East, young man, go East. You will spot a winner every time, if it is entertainment you seek, by mounting the first East-bound omnibus that passes. For the East is eternally fresh, because it is alive. The West, like all things of fashion, is but a corpse electrified. They are so tired, these lily-clad ladies and white-fronted gentlemen, of their bloodless, wine-whipped frivolities. They want to enjoy themselves very badly, but they do not know how to do it. They know that enjoyment only means eating the same dinner at a different restaurant, and afterwards meeting the same tired people, or seeing the same show, the same songs, jests, dances at different houses. But Eastward ... there, large and full, blossoms Life--a rather repellent Life, perhaps, for Life is always that. Hatred, filth, love, battle, and death--all elemental things are here, undisguised; and if elemental things repel you, my lamb, then you have no business to be on this planet. Night, in the particular spots of the East to which these pages take you, shows you Life in the raw, stripped of its silken wrappings; and it is of passionate interest to those for whom humanity is the only Book. In the West pleasure is a business; in the East it is recreation. In the East it may be a thinner, poorer body, but it is alive. The people are sick, perhaps, with toil; but below that sickness there is a lust for enjoyment that lights up every little moment of their evening, as I shall show you later, when we come to Bethnal Green, Hoxton, and the athletic saloons. You may listen to Glazounoff's "L'Automne Bacchanale" at the Palace Theatre, danced by Pavlova, but I should not look in Shaftesbury Avenue or Piccadilly for its true spirit. Rather, I should go to Kingsland Road, Tunnel Gardens, Jamaica Road; to the trafficked highways, rent with naphthas, that rush about East India Dock. There, when the lamps are lighted, and bead the night with tears, and the sweet girls go by, and throw their little laughter to the boys--there you have your true Bacchanales.

So, leaving the fixed grin of decay in Coventry Street, we mounted a motor-'bus, and dashed gaily through streets of rose and silver--it was October--and dropped off by the Poplar Hippodrome, whose harsh signs lit the night to sudden beauty.

To turn from East India Dock Road to West India Dock Road is to turn, contradictorily, from West to East, from a fury of lights and noise and faces into a stillness almost chaste. At least, chaste is the first word you think of. In a few seconds you feel that it is the wrong epithet. Something ... something there is in this dusky, throttled byway that seems to be crawling into your blood. The road seems to slink before you; and you know that, once in, you can only get out by retracing your steps or crossing into the lost Isle of Dogs. Against the wrath of October cloud, little low shops peer at you. In the sharp shadows their lights fall like swords across your path. The shuttered gloom of the eastern side shows strangely menacing. Each whispering house seems an abode of dread things. Each window seems filled with frightful eyes. Each corner, half-lit by a timid gas-jet, seems to harbour unholy features. A black man, with Oriental features, brushes against you. You collide with a creeping yellow man. He says something--it might be Chinese or Japanese or Philippinese jargon. A huge Hindoo shuffles, cat-like, against the shops. A fried-fish bar, its windows covered with Scandinavian phrases, flings a burst of melodious light for which you are grateful.

No; chaste was certainly not the right word. Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be that attendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people who love it because their deeds are evil.

But now we come to Pennyfields, to the thunderous shadows of the great Dock, and to that low-lit Causeway that carries such subtle tales of flowered islands, white towns, green bays, and sunlight like wine. At the mouth of Pennyfields is a cluster of Chinks. You may see at once that they dislike you.

But my friend Sam Tai Ling will give us better welcome, I think; so we slip into the Causeway, with its lousy shop-fronts decorated with Chinese signs, among them the Sign of the Foreign Drug Open Lamp. At every doorway stand groups of the gallant fellows, eyeing appreciatively such white girls as pass that way. You taste the curious flavour of the place--its mixture of camaraderie and brutality, of cruelty and pity and tears; of precocious children and wrecked men--and you smell its perfume, the week before last. But here is the home of Tai Ling, one of the most genial souls to be met in a world of cynicism and dyspepsia: a lovable character, radiating sweetness and a tolerably naughty goodness in this narrow street. Not immoral, for to be immoral you must first subscribe to some conventional morality. Tai Ling does not. You cannot do wrong until you have first done right. Tai Ling has not. He is just non-moral; and right and wrong are words he does not understand. He is in love with life and song and wine and the beauty of women. The world to him is a pause on a journey, where one may take one's idle pleasure while others strew the path with mirth and roses. He knows only two divisions of people: the gay and the stupid. He never turns aside from pleasure, or resists an invitation to the feast. In fact, by our standards a complete rogue, yet the most joyous I have known. Were you to visit him and make his acquaintance, you would thank me for the introduction to so charming a character. I never knew a man with so seductive a smile. Many a time it has driven the virtuously indignant heart out of me. An Oriental smile, you know, is not an affair of a swift moment. It has a birth and a beginning. It awakens, hesitates, grows, and at last from the sad chrysalis emerges the butterfly. A Chinese smile at the full is one of the subtlest expressions of which the human face is capable.

Mr. Sam Tai Ling keeps a restaurant, and, some years ago, when my ways were cast about West India Dock Road, I knew him well. He was an old man then; he is an old man now: the same age, I fancy. Supper with him is something to remember--I use the phrase carefully. You will find, after supper, that soda-mints and potass-water are more than grateful and comforting.

When we entered he came forward at once, and such was his Celestial courtesy that, although we had recently dined, to refuse supper was impossible. He supped with us himself in the little upper room, lit by gas, and decorated with bead curtains and English Christmas-number supplements. A few oily seamen were manipulating the chop-sticks and thrusting food to their mouths with a noise that, on a clear night, I should think, could be heard as far as Shadwell. When honourable guests were seated, honourable guests were served by Mr. Tai Ling. There were noodle, shark's fins, chop suey, and very much fish and duck, and lychee fruits. The first dish consisted of something that resembled a Cornish pasty--chopped fish and onion and strange meats mixed together and heavily spiced, encased in a light flour-paste. Then followed a plate of noodle, some bitter lemon, and finally a pot of China tea prepared on the table: real China tea, remember, all-same Shan-tung; not the backwash of the name which is served in Piccadilly tea-shops. The tea is carefully prepared by one who evidently loves his work, and is served in little cups, without milk or sugar, but flavoured with chrysanthemum buds.

As our meal progressed, the cafe began to fill; and the air bubbled with the rush of labial talk from the Celestial company. We were the only white things there. All the company was yellow, with one or two tan-skinned girls.

But we were out for amusement, so, after the table hospitality, Sam took us into the Causeway. Out of the coloured darkness of Pennyfields came the muffled wail of reed instruments, the heart-cry of the Orient; noise of traffic; bits of honeyed talk. On every side were following feet: the firm, clear step of the sailor; the loud, bullying boots of the tough; the joyful steps that trickle from "The Green Man"; and, through all this chorus, most insistently, the stealthy, stuttering steps of the satyr. For your Chink takes his pleasure where he finds it; not, perhaps, the pleasure that you would approve, for probably you are not of that gracious temperament that accords pity and the soft hand to the habits of your fellows. Yet so many are the victims of the flesh, and for so little while are we here, that one can but smile and be kind. Besides, these yellow birds come from an Eastern country, where they do not read English law or bother about such trifles as the age of consent.

Every window, as always, was closely shuttered, but between the joints shot jets of slim light, and sometimes you could catch the chanting of a little sweet song last sung in Rangoon or Swatow. One of these songs was once translated for me. I should take great delight in printing it here, but, alas! this, too, comes from a land where purity crusades are unknown. I dare not conjecture what Bayswater would do to me if I reproduced it.

We passed through Pennyfields, through clusters of gladly coloured men. Vaguely we remembered leaving Henrietta Street, London, and dining in Old Compton Street, Paris, a few hours ago. And now--was this Paris or London or Tuan-tsen or Taiping? Pin-points of light pricked the mist in every direction. A tom-tom moaned somewhere in the far-away.

It was now half-past ten. The public-house at the extreme end was becoming more obvious and raucous. But, at a sudden black door, Sam stopped. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he slid through its opening, and we followed. Stairs led straight from the street to a basement chamber--candle-lit, with two exits. I had been there before, but to my companions it was new. We were in luck. A Dai Nippon had berthed a few hours previously, and here was its crew, flinging their wages fast over the fan-tan tables, or letting it go at Chausa-Bazee or Pachassee.

It was a well-kept establishment where agreeable fellows might play a game or so, take a shot of opium, or find other varieties of Oriental delight. The far glooms were struck by low-toned lanterns. Couches lay about the walls; strange men decorated them and three young girls in socks, idiotically drunk. Small tables were everywhere, each table obscured in a fog of yellow faces and greasy hair. The huge scorbutic proprietor, Ho Ling, swam noiselessly from table to table. A lank figure in brown shirting, its fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe, sprawled in another corner. The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many growings, opium, betel-nut, bhang, and moist flesh allied themselves in one grand assault on the nostrils. Perhaps you wonder how they manage to keep these places clean. That may be answered in two words: they don't.

On a table beneath one of the lanterns squatted a musician with a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody of six repeated notes.

Suddenly, at one of the tables was a slight commotion. A wee slip of a fellow had apparently done well at fan-tan, for he slid from his corner, and essayed a song--I fancy it was meant to be "Robert E. Lee"--in his seaman's pidgin. At least, his gestures were those of a ragtime comedian, and the tune bore some faint resemblance. Or is it that the ragtime kings have gone to the antiquities of the Orient for their melodies? But he had not gone far before Ho Ling, with the dignity of a mandarin, removed him. And the smell being a little too strong for us, we followed, and strolled to the Asiatics' Home.

The smell--yes. There is nothing in the world like the smell of a Chinatown in a Western city. It is a grand battle between a variety of odours, but opium prevails. The mouth of West India Dock Road is foul with it. For you might as well take away a navvy's half-pint of beer as deprive a Chink of his shot of dope and his gambling-table. Opium is forbidden under the L.C.C. regulations, and therefore the Chink sleeps at a licensed lodging-house and goes elsewhere for his fun. Every other house in this quarter is a seamen's lodging-house. These hotels have no lifts, and no electric light, and no wine-lists. You pay threepence a night, and you get the accommodation you pay for. But then, they are not for silk-clad ossifications such as you and me. They are for the lusty coloured lads who work the world with steam and sail: men whose lives lie literally in their great hands, who go down to the sea in ships and sometimes have questionable business in great waters.

These India Docks are like no other docks in the world. About their gates you find the scum of the world's worst countries; all the peoples of the delirious Pacific of whom you have read and dreamed--Arab, Hindoo, Malayan, Chink, Jap, South Sea Islander--a mere catalogue of the names is a romance. Here are pace and high adventure; the tang of the East; fusion of blood and race and creed. A degenerate dross it is, but, do you know, I cannot say that I don't prefer it to the well-spun gold that is flung from the Empire on boat-race nights. Place these fellows against our blunt backgrounds, under the awful mystery of the City's night, and they present the finest spectacle that London affords.

You may see them in their glory at the Asiatics' Home, to which we now came. A delightful place, this home for destitute Orientals; for it has a veranda and a compound, stone beds and caged cubicles, no baths and a billiard-table; and extraordinary precautions are taken against indulgence of the wicked tastes of its guests. Grouped about the giant stove are Asiatics of every country in wonderful toilet creations. A mild-eyed Hindoo, lacking a turban, has appropriated a bath-towel. A Malay appears in white cotton trousers, frock-coat, brown boots, and straw hat; and a stranded Burmese cuts no end of a figure in under-vest, steward's jacket, yellow trousers and squash hat. All carry a knife or a krees, and all are quite pleasant people, who will accept your Salaam and your cigarette. Rules and regulations for impossibly good conduct hang on the walls in Hindustani, Japanese, Swahili, Urdu, and Malayan. All food is prepared and cooked by themselves, and the slaughter of an animal for the table must be witnessed and prayed upon by those of their own faith. Out in the compound is a skittle-alley, where the boys stroll and play; and costumes, people, and setting have all the appearance of the _ensemble_ of a cheap revue.

I suppose one dare not write on Limehouse without mentioning opium-rooms. Well, if one must, one must, though I have nothing of the expected to tell you. I have known Limehouse for many years, and have smiled many times at the articles that appear perennially on the wickedness of the place. Its name evokes evil tradition in the public mind. There are ingenuous people who regard it as dangerous. I have already mentioned its sinister atmosphere; but there is an end of it. There is nothing substantial. These are the people who will tell you of the lurking perils of certain quarters of London--how that there are streets down which, even in broad daylight, the very police do not venture unaccompanied. You may believe that, if you choose; it is simply a tale for the soft-minded with a turn for the melodramatic. There is no such thing as a dangerous street in London. I have loafed and wandered in every part of London, slums, foreign quarters, underground, and docksides, and if you must have adventure in London, then you will have to make your own. The two fiercest streets of the metropolis--Dorset Street and Hoxton Street--are as safe for the wayfarer as Oxford Street; for women, safer. And the manners of Limehouse are certainly a lesson to Streatham Hill.

But we are talking of opium. We left Mr. Tai Ling on the steps of the Asiatics' Home, and from there we wandered to High Street, Poplar, to the house of a gracious gentleman from Pi-chi-li, not for opium but for a chat with him. For my companions had not smoked before, and I did not want two helpless invalids on my hands at midnight. Those amazingly thrilling and amazingly ludicrous stories of East End opium-rooms are mainly, I may say, the work of journalistic specials. A journalistic special is a man who writes thrillingly on old-fashioned topics on which he is ill-informed. The moment he knows something about his subject he is not allowed to write; he ceases to be a special. Also, of course, if a man, on sociological investigation, puts an initial pipe of opium on top of a brandy or so--well, one can understand that even the interior of the Bayswater omnibus may be a haunt of terror and wonder. Taking a jolt of "chandu" in a Limehouse room is about as exciting as taking a mixed vermuth at the Leicester Lounge.