Chapter IV: Part 4

As the opera proceeds, so does the marvel grow. You think he can have nothing more to give than he has just given; the next moment he deceives you. Towards the end of the first Act, Melba enters. You hear her voice, fragile and firm as fluted china, before she enters. Then comes the wonderful love-duet--"Che gelida manina" for Caruso and "Mi chiamano Mimi" for Melba. Gold swathed in velvet is his voice. Like all true geniuses, he is prodigal of his powers; he flings his lyrical fury over the house. He gives all, yet somehow conveys that thrilling suggestion of great things in reserve. Again and again he recaptures his first fine careless rapture. His voice dances forth like a little girl on a sunlit road, wayward, captivating, never fatigued, leaping where others stumble, tripping many miles, with fresh laughter and bright quick blood. There never were such warmth and profusion and display. Not only is it a voice of incomparable magnificence: it has that intangible quality that smites you with its own mood: just the something that marks the difference between an artist and a genius. There are those who sniff at him. "No artist," they say; "look what he sings." They would like him better if he were not popular; if he concerned himself, not with Puccini and Leoncavallo, but with those pretentiously subtle triflers, Debussy and his followers. Some people can never accept beauty unless it be remote. But true beauty is never remote. The art which demands transcendentalism for its appreciation stamps itself at once as inferior. True art, like love, asks nothing, and gives everything. The simplest people can understand and enjoy Puccini and Caruso and Melba, because the simplest people are artists. And clearly, if beauty cannot speak to us in our own language, and still retain its dignity, it is not beauty at all.

Caruso speaks to us of the little things we know, but he speaks with a lyric ecstasy. Ecstasy is a horrible word; it sounds like something to do with algebra; but it is the one word for this voice. The passion of him has at times almost frightened me. I remember hearing him at the first performance of "Madame Butterfly," and he hurt us. He worked up the love-duet with Butterfly at the close of the first act in such fashion that our hands were wrung, we were perspiring, and I at least was near to fainting. Such fury, such volume of liquid sound could not go on, we felt. But it did. He carried a terrific crescendo passage as lightly as a school-girl singing a lullaby, and ended on a tremendous note which he sustained for sixty seconds. As the curtain fell we dropped back in our seats, limp, dishevelled, and pale. It was we who were exhausted. Caruso trotted on, bright, alert, smiling, and not the slightest trace of fatigue did he show.

It seems to have been a superb stroke of fortune for us that Caruso should have come along contemporaneously with Puccini. Puccini has never definitely written an opera for his friend; yet, to hear him sing them, you might think that every one had been specially made for him alone. Their temperaments are marvellously matched. Each is Italian and Southern to the bone. Whatever Caruso may be singing, whether it be Mozart or Gounod or Massenet or Weber, he is really singing Italy. Whatever setting Puccini may take for his operas, be it Japan, or Paris, or the American West, his music is never anything but Italian.

And I would not have it otherwise. It may offend some artistic consciences that Butterfly, the Japanese courtesan, should sob out her lament in music which is purely Italian in character and colour; but what a piece of melody it is!

Puccini's is a still small voice; very pleading, very conscious of itself and of the pathos of our little span of living; but the wistfulness of its appeal is almost heartbreaking. He can never, I suppose, stand among the great composers; dwarfed he must always be against Mozart or Weber, or even Verdi. But he has done what all wise men must do: he has discovered the one thing he can perform well, and he is performing it very well indeed. His genius is slim and miniature, but he handles it as an artist. There is no man living who can achieve such effects with so slender material. There is no man living who can so give you, in a few bars, the soul of the little street-girl; no man living who can so give you flavour of a mood, or make you smell so sharply the atmosphere of a public street, a garret, a ballroom, or a prairie. And he always succeeds because he is always sincere. A bigger man might put his tongue in his cheek and sit down to produce something like "La Boheme," and fail miserably, simply because he didn't mean it.

When Puccini has something to say, though it may be nothing profound or illuminating, he says it; and he can say the trite thing more freshly, with more delicacy, and in more haunting tones, than any other musician. His vocabulary is as marvellous as his facility in orchestration and in the development of a theme. He gets himself into tangles from which there seems no possible escape, only to extricate himself with the airiest of touches. Never does his fertility of melodic invention fail him. He is as prodigal in this respect as Caruso in his moments. Where others achieve a beautiful phrase, and rest on it, Puccini never idles; he has others and others, and he crowds them upon you until the ear is surfeited with sweetness, and you can but sit and marvel.

There it is. Sniff at it as you will, it is a great art that captures you against your reason, and when Puccini and Caruso join forces, they can shake the soul out of the most rabid of musical purists. What they do to commonplace people like myself is untellable. I have tried to hint at it in these few remarks, but really I have told you nothing ... nothing.

* * * * *

I am not over-fond of the Promenade Concerts. You have, of course, everything of the best--the finest music of the world, the finest English orchestra, and a neat little concert-hall; but somehow there is that about it that suggests Education. I have a feeling that Sir Henry is taking me by the hand, training me up in the way I should, musically, go. And I hate being trained. I don't want things explained to me. The programme looks rather like "Music without Tears" or "First Steps for the Little Ones." I know perfectly well what Wagner meant by the "Tannhaeuser" overture, and what Beethoven wants to say to me in the Ninth Symphony. I don't want these things pointed out to me, and sandwiched between information as to when the composer was born, how long he lived, and how many hundred works he wrote. However, all that apart, the Promenades are an institution which we should cherish. For a shilling you can lean against the wall of the area, and smoke, and take your fill of the best in music. If there is anything that doesn't interest you, you can visit the bar until it is concluded. The audience on the Promenade is as interesting as the programme. All types are to be found here--the serious and hard-up student, the musically inclined working-man, probably a member of some musical society in his suburb, the young clerk, the middle-aged man, and a few people who KNOW.

The orchestra is well set, and its pendant crimson lamps and fernery make a solemn picture in the soft light. The vocalists and soloists are not, usually, of outstanding merit, but they sing and play agreeably, and, even if they attempt more than their powers justify them in doing, they never distress you. Sir Henry Wood's entrance on the opening night of any season is an impressive affair. As each known member of the orchestra comes in, he receives an ovation; but ovation is a poor descriptive for Sir Henry's reception. There is no doubt that he has done more for music in England than any other man, and his audiences know this; they regard him almost as a friend.

He is an artist in the matter of programmes. He builds them as a chef builds up an elaborate banquet, by the blending of many flavours and essences, each item a subtle, unmarked progression on its predecessor. He is very fond of his Russians, and his readings of Tchaikowsky seem to me the most beautiful work he does. I do not love Tchaikowsky, but he draws me by, I suppose, the attraction of repulsion. The muse who guides the dreamings of the Russian artist is a sombre and heavy-lidded lady, but most sombre, I think, when she moves in the brain of the musician. Then she wears the glooms and sables of the hypochondriac. She does not "nerve us with incessant affirmations." Rather, she enervates us with incessant dubitations. It is more than a relief to leave the crowded Promenade, after a Tchaikowsky symphony, to stroll in the dusky glitter of Langham Place, and return to listen the clear, cool tones of Mozart, as sparkling and as gracious as a May morning! Next to Tchaikowsky, Sir Henry gives us much of Wagner and Beethoven and Mendelssohn. I can never understand why Mendelssohn is played nowadays. His music always seems to me to be so provincial and gentlemanly and underbred as to remind one of a county ball. I am sure he always composed in a frock-coat, silk hat, and lavender gloves. When he is being played, many of us have to rush away and saunter in the foyer.

Usually the programme contains some examples of modern French music (a delicate horror by Ravel, perhaps) and of the early Italians. You will get something sweet and suave and restful by Palestrina or Handel, and conclude, perhaps, with a tempest of Berlioz.

During the season of the Promenades, there are also excellent concerts going on in the lost districts of London. There is, to begin with, the Grand Opera season at the Old Vic. in Waterloo Road, where you can get a box for one-and-sixpence, and a seat in the gallery for twopence. The orchestra is good, and the singers are satisfactory. The operas include "Daughter of the Regiment," and run through Verdi and some of Wagner to Mascagni and Charpentier. The audience is mostly drawn from the surrounding streets, the New Cut and Lower Marsh. It wears its working clothes, and it smokes cut Cavendish; but there is not a whisper from the first bar of the overture to the curtain. The chorus is drawn from the local clubs, and a very live and intelligent chorus it is. Then there are the Saturday evening concerts at the People's Palace in Whitechapel, at the Surrey Masonic Hall, in Camberwell, at Cambridge House, and at Vincent Square. In each case the programme is distinctly classical. It is only popular in the sense that the prices are small and the performers' services are honorary. Many a time have I attended one of these concerts, because I knew I should hear there some old, but obscure, classic that I should never be likely to hear at any of the West End concert-halls.

These West End halls are unhappily situated. The dismal Bond Street holds one, another stands cheek by jowl with Marlborough Police Court, and the other two are stuck deep in the melancholic greyness of Wigmore Street. All are absurdly inaccessible. However, when it is a case of Paderewski or Hambourg or Backhaus or Ysayt, people will make pilgrimages to the end of the earth ... or to Wigmore Street. It was at the Bechstein, on a stifling June evening, that I first heard that mischievous angel, Vladimir de Pachmann.

We had dined solidly, with old English ale, at "The Cock," in Fleet Street. Perhaps tomato soup, mutton cutlets, quarts of bitter, apple and blackberry tart and cream, macaroni cheese, coffee, and kuemmel are hardly in the right key for an evening with Chopin. But I am not one of those who take their pleasures sadly. If I am to appreciate delicate art, I must be physically well prepared. It may be picturesque to sit through a Bayreuth Festival on three dates and a nut, but monkey-tricks of that kind are really a slight on one's host. However, I felt very fat, physically, and very Maeterlinckian, spiritually, as we clambered into a cab and swung up the great bleak space of Kingsway.

At the entrance to the Steinway we ran against a bunch of critics, and adjourned to the little place at the opposite corner, so that one of the critics might learn from us what he ought to say about the concert. We had just time to slip into our seats, and then Pachmann, sleek and bullet-headed, minced on to the platform. I said that I felt fat, physically, and Maeterlinckian or Burne-Jonesy, or anything else that suggests the twilight mood, spiritually. But the moment Pachmann came on he drove the mood clean out of us. Obviously, _he_ wasn't feeling Maeterlinckian or Chopinesque. He was feeling very full of Pachmann, one could see. Nothing die-away or poetic about him. He was fat physically, and he looked fat spiritually. One conceived him much more readily nodding over the fire with the old port, than playing Chopin in a bleak concert-hall, laden with solemn purples and drabs, stark and ungarnished save for a few cold flowers and ferns.

However, there he was; and after he had played games and cracked jokes, of which nobody knew the secrets but himself, with the piano-stool, his hair, and his handkerchief, he set to work. He flourished a few scales; looked up; giggled; said something to the front row; looked off and nodded; rubbed his fingers; gently patted his ashen cheek; then stretched both hands to the keys.

He played first a group of Preludes. What is there to say about him? Nothing. Surely never, since Chopin went from us, has Chopin been so played. The memory of my Fleet Street dinner vanished. The hall vanished. All surroundings vanished. Vladimir, the antic, took us by the hand and led us forth into a new country: a country like nothing that we have seen or dreamed of, and therefore a country of which not the vaguest image can be created. It was a country, or, perhaps, a street of pale shadows ... and that is all I know. Its name is Pachmann-land.

Before he was through the first short prelude, he had us in his snare. One by one the details of the room faded, and nothing was left but a cloud of lilac in which were Pachmann and the sleek, gleaming piano. As he played, change succeeded change. The piano was labelled Chappell, but it might just as well have been labelled Bill Bailey. Under Pachmann, the wooden structure took life, as it were, and became a living thing, breathing, murmuring, clamouring, shrieking. Soon there was neither Chappell, nor Pachmann, nor Chopin; only a black creature--Piano. One shivered, and felt curiously afraid.

Then, suddenly, there was a crash of chords--and silence. That crash had shattered everything, and, looking up, we saw nothing but the grinning Pachmann. One half-remembered that he had been grinning and gesturing and grimacing with ape-like imbecility all the time, yet, somehow, one had not noticed it. He bobbed up and down, and grinned, and applauded himself. But there was something uncanny, mysterious. We looked at one another uneasily, afraid to exchange glances. Nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to speak. A few smiled shy, secret smiles, half-afraid of themselves. For some moments nobody even applauded. Something had been with us. Something strange and sad and exquisitely fragile had gone from us.

Pachmann looked at us, noted our dumb wonder, and--giggled like an idiot.

A JEWISH NIGHT

WHITECHAPEL

_LONDON ROSES_

_When the young year woos all the world to flower
With gold and silver of sun and shower,
The girls troop out with an elfin clamour,
Delicate bundles of lace and light.
And London is laughter and youth and playtime,
Fair as the million-blossomed may-time:
All her ways are afire with glamour,
With dainty damosels pink and white._

_The weariest streets new joys discover;
The sweet glad girl and the lyric lover
Sing their hearts to the moment's flying,
Never a thought to time or tears.
O frivolous frocks! O fragrant faces,
Scattering blooms in the gloomy places!
Shatter and scatter our sombre sighing,
And lead us back to the golden years!_

A JEWISH NIGHT

WHITECHAPEL

Whitechapel exists under false pretences. It has no right to its name, for the word Whitechapel arouses grim fears in the minds of those who know it not. Its reputation is as theatrically artificial as that of the New York Bowery. Its poverty and its tradition of lawlessness are sedulously fostered by itself for the benefit of the simple-minded slummer.

To-day it is, next to St. John's Wood, the most drably respectable quarter of the town. This is explained by the fact that it is the Ghetto: the home of the severely moral Jew. There is no disorder in Whitechapel. There is no pillage or rapine or bashing. The colony leads its own pleasant life, among its own people, interfering with none and desiring intercourse with none. It has its own manners and customs and its own simple and very beautiful ceremonies. The Jews in London are much scattered. They live in various quarters, according to the land of their birth. Thus, the French Jews are in Soho, the German Jews in Great Charlotte Street, the Italian Jews in Clerkenwell, while those of Whitechapel are either Russian Jews or Jews who have, for three generations, been settled in London. The wealthy Jew, who fancies himself socially, the fat, immoral stockbroker and the City philanderer, has deserted the surroundings of his humbler compatriots for the refinements of Highbury, Maida Vale, and Bayswater.

The Whitechapel Ghetto begins at Aldgate, branches off at that point where Commercial Street curls its nasty length to Shoreditch, and embraces the greater part of Commercial Road East, sprawling on either side. Here at every turn you will meet the Jew of the comic papers. You will see expressive fingers, much jewelled, flying in unison with the rich Yiddish tongue. You will see beards and silk hats which are surely those which decorated the Hebrew in Eugene Sue's romance. And you will find a spirit of brotherhood keener than any other race in the world can show. It is something akin to the force that inspired that splendid fraternity that once existed in London, and is now no more: I mean the Costers. If a Jew is in trouble or in any kind of distress, a most beautiful thing happens: his friends rally round him.

The atmosphere of the Ghetto is a singular mixture. It is half-ironic gaiety and half-melancholy. But it has not the depressing sadness of the Russian Quarter. Its temper is more akin to that of the Irish colony that has settled around Southwark and Bermondsey. There is sadness, but no misery. There is gloom, but no despair. There is hilarity, but no frivolity. There is a note of delight, with sombre undertones. There is nothing of the rapture of living, but rather the pride of accepted destiny. In the hotels and cafes this is most marked. At the Aldgate Hotel, you may sit in the brasserie and listen to the Russian Trio discoursing wistful music, while the packed tables reek with smoke and Yiddish talk; but there is a companionable, almost domestic touch about the place which is so lacking about the Western lounges. Young Isaacs is there, flashing with diamonds and hair-oil, and Rebecca is with him, and the large, admiring parents of both of them sit with them and drink beer or eat sandwiches. And Isaacs makes love to his Rebecca in full sight of all. They lounge in their chairs, arms enclasped, sometimes kissing, sometimes patting one another. And the parents look on, and roll their curly heads and say, with subtle significance, "Oi-oi-oi!" many times.

Out in the street there is the same homely, yearning atmosphere. It is the homeliness of a people without a home, without a country. They are exiles who have flung together, as well as may be, the few remnants of their possessions, adding to them little touches that may re-create the colour of their land, and have settled down to make the best of things. Their feasts and festivals are full of this yearning. The Feast of Maccabeus, which is celebrated near our Christmas-time, is delightfully domestic. It is preceded, eight days before, by the Feast of the Lights. In each house a candle is lit--one candle on the first day, two on the second, three on the third, and so on until the eighth day, which is that dedicated to Maccabeus. Then there are feastings, and throughout the rich evenings the boys walk with the girls or salute the latter as they lounge at the corners with that suggestion in their faces of lazy strength and smouldering fire. A children's service is held in the synagogues, and cakes and sweets are distributed. The dark, vivid beauty of these children shows marvellously against the greys of Whitechapel. Every Saturday of the year the streets are filled with them, for then all shops are shut, all work suspended, and the little ones are in those best frocks and velvet suits in which even the poorest parents are so proud to clothe their offspring. They love colour; and ribbons of many hues are lavished on the frocks and tunics. One of my London moments was when I first saw, in Whitechapel High Street, a little Jewess, with masses of jet-black hair, dressed in vermilion and white. I wonder, by the way, why it is that the children of the genteel quarters of London, such as Kensington Gardens, have no hair, or at any rate, only skimpy little twigs of it, while the children of the East are loaded with curls and tresses of an almost tropical luxuriance, and are many times more beautiful. Does that terrifying process called Good Breeding kill all beauty? Does careful feeding and tending poison the roots of loveliness? I wonder.... Anyway, the Jews, beautiful alike in face and richness of tresses, stand to the front in two of the greatest callings of the world--art and fighting. Examine the heroes of the prize-ring; at least two-thirds of them are Jews. Examine the world's greatest musicians and singers, and the same may be said.

On Sundays, of course, only the rags of everyday are seen, for then the work of the week begins again. At about the time of our Easter the Feast of the Passover is celebrated. Then, if you walk down Middlesex Street any Sunday morning you will notice an activity even more feverish than that which it mostly presents. Jews of every nationality flock to it; and for the week preceding this Feast the stall-holders do tremendous business, not, as is customary, with the Gentiles, but among their own people. The Feast of the Passover is one of the oldest and quaintest religious ceremonies of the oldest religion in the world. Fasting and feasting intermingle with observances. Spring-cleaning is general at this season, for all things must be _kosher-al-pesach_, or clean and pure. At the cafes you will find a special kosher bar, whereon are wines and spirits in brand new decanters, glasses freshly bought and cleansed, and a virgin cloth surmounting the whole. The domestic and hardware shops are busy, for the home must be replenished with chaste vessels--pots and pans and all utensils are bought with reckless disregard of expense. Milk may not be bought from the milkman's cans. Each house fetches its own from the shops, in new, clean jugs, which are, of course, _kosher_; and nothing is eaten but unleavened bread.

When the fast is over, begins the feast, and the cafes and the family dining-rooms are full. Down a side street stand straggling armies of ragged, unkempt Jews--men, women, and children. These are the destitutes. For them the season brings no rejoicing. Therefore their compatriots come forward, and at the office of the Jewish Board of Guardians they assemble to distribute supplies of grocery, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, and so forth. Country or sex matters not; all Jews must rejoice, and, when necessary, must be supplied with the means of rejoicing. So here are gathered all the wandering Jews without substance. Later, after the fine feed which is provided for them, there are services in the synagogue. The men and women, in strict isolation, are a drama in themselves. Men with long beards and sad, shifty faces; men with grey beards, keen eyes, and intellectual profile; men with curly hair and Italian features; and women with dark, shining hair and flashing eyes--men, women, and children of every country and clime, rich and poor, are gathered there to worship after the forms of the saddest of all faiths.

The Ghetto is full of life every evening, for then the workshops and factories and warehouses are closed, and the handsome youth of Whitechapel is free to amuse itself. Most of the girls work at the millinery establishments, and most of the boys at the wholesale drapery houses. The High Street is one of the most picturesque main streets of London. The little low butchers' shops, fronted by raucous stalls, the gabled houses, and the flat-faced hotels, are some of the loveliest bits of eighteenth-century domestic architecture remaining in London. And the crowd! It sweeps you from your feet; it catches you up, drags you, drops you, jostles you; and you don't mind in the least. They are all so gay, and they look upon you with such haunting glances that it is impossible to be cross with them. If you leave the London Docks, and crawl up the dismal serenity of Cable Street, the High Street seems to snatch you. You catch the mood of the moment; you dance with the hour. There is noise and the flare of naphtha. There are opulent glooms. The regiment of lame stalls is packed so closely, shoulder to shoulder, that if one gave an inch the whole line would fall. Meat, greengrocery, Brummagem jewellery for the rich beauty of Rhoda, shell-fish, confectionery, old magazines, pirated music, haberdashery, "throw-out" (or Sudden Death) cigars--all these glories are waiting to seize your pennies. Slippery slices of fish sprawl dolefully on the slabs. The complexion of the meat-shops, under the yellow light, is rich and strange. But there is very little shouting; the shopkeepers make no attempt to entice you. There are the goods: have 'em if you like; if not, leave 'em.

If you are hungry, and really want something to eat, I suggest your going to one of the restaurants or hotels, and trying their table d'hote. They run usually to six or seven courses, two of which will satisfy any reasonable hunger. Yet I have seen frail young girls tackle the complete menu, and come up fresh and smiling at the end. Of course, women are, as a rule, much heavier eaters than men, but these delicate, pallid girls of the Ghetto set you marvelling. I have occasionally joined a party, and delightful table companions they were. For they can talk; they have, if not humour, at any rate a very mordant wit, as all melancholy peoples have; and they languish in the most delicately captivating way.

On my first experience, we started the meal with Solomon Grundy--pickled herring. Then followed a thick soup, in which were little threads of a paste made from eggs and flour and little balls of unleavened dough. Then came a kind of pea-soup, and here a little lady of the party ordered unfermented Muscat wine. The good Jew may not touch shell-fish or any fish without scales, so we were next served with fried soles and fried plaice, of which Rachel took both, following, apparently, the custom of the country. Although the menu consists of seven courses, each item contains two, and sometimes three or four, dishes; and the correct diner tastes every one. Roast veal, served in the form of stew, followed, and then came roast fowl and tongue. There were also salads, and sauerkraut, and then a pease-pudding, and then almond-pudding, and then staffen, and then ... I loosened a button, and gazed upon Rachel in wonder. She was still eating bread.

It is well to be careful, before visiting any of the Ghetto cafes, to acquaint yourself with rules and ceremonies. Otherwise you may unintentionally give offence and make yourself several kinds of idiot. I have never at any period of my London life been favoured with a guiding hand. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I was alone. That is really the only way to see things, and certainly the only way to learn things. If I wanted to penetrate the inmost mysteries of Hoxton, I went to Hoxton, and blundered into private places and to any holy of holies that looked interesting. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes I got what I asked for. When at seventeen I wanted to find out if the Empire Promenade was really anything like the Empire Promenade, I went to the Empire Promenade. Of course, I made mistakes and muddled through. I made mistakes in the Ghetto. I was the bright boy who went to a shabby little cafe in Osborn Street, and asked for smoked beef, roll and butter, and coffee. The expression on that waiter's face haunts me whenever I feel bad and small. He did not order me out of the restaurant. He did not assault me. He looked at me, and I grieved to see his dear grey eyes ... so sad. He said: "Pardon, but this is a kosher cafe. I am not a Jew myself, but how can I serve what you order? Tell me--how can I do it? What?"

I said: "I beg your pardon, too. I don't understand. Tell me more."

He said: "Would you marry your aunt? No. Neither may a Jewish restaurant serve milk, or its derivatives, such as, so to speak, butter, cheese, and so forth, on the same table with flesh. You ask for meat and bread and butter. You must have bread with your meat. If you have coffee, sir, you will have it BLACK."

I said: "It is my fault. No offence intended. I didn't know. Once again, I have made an ass of myself. Had I better not go?"

He said, swiftly: "No, don't go, sir. Oh, don't go. Listen: have the smoked beef, with a roll. Follow with prunes or kugel. And if you want a drink _with_ your meal, instead of afterwards, have tea-and-lemon in place of black coffee."

And so, out of that brutal mistake, I made yet another London friend, of whom I have, roughly, about two thousand five hundred scattered over the four-mile radius.

A HAPPY NIGHT

SURBITON AND BATTERSEA

_A SUBURBAN NIGHT_

_Oh, sweetly sad and sadly sweet,
That rain-pearled night at Highbury!
The picture-theatre, off the street,
That housed us from the lisping sleet,
Is a white grave of dreams for me._

_Though smile and talk were all our part,
Sorrow lay prone upon your heart
That never again our lips might meet,
And never so softly fall the sleet
In gay-lamped, lyric Highbury.
Love made your lily face to shine,
But oh, your cheek was salt to mine,
As we walked home from Highbury._

_O starry street of shop and show,
And was it thus long years ago?
Was the full tale but waste and woe,
And Love but doom in Highbury,
My dusty, dreaming Highbury?_

A HAPPY NIGHT

SURBITON AND BATTERSEA

When I received the invitation to the whist-drive at Surbiton my first thought was, "Not likely!" I had visions of a boring evening: I knew Surbiton. I knew its elegances and petty refinements. I knew its pathetic apings of Curzon Street and Grosvenor Square. I knew its extremely dull smartness of speech and behaviour. I foresaw that I should enjoy myself as much as I did at the Y.M.C.A. concert where everybody sang refined songs and stopped the star from going on because he was about to sing the "Hymn to Venus," which was regarded as "a little amorous." The self-conscious waywardness, the deliberate Bohemianism of Surbiton, I said to myself, is not for me. I shall either overplay it or underplay it. Certainly I shall give offence if I am my normal self. For the Bohemianism of Surbiton, I continued, has very strict rules which nobody in Bohemia ever heard of, and you cannot be a Surbiton Bohemian until you have mastered those rules and learned how gracefully to transgress them. If I throw bread pellets at the girls, they will call me unmannerly. If I don't they will call me stiff. You may have noticed that those pseudo-intellectuals who like to think themselves Bohemian are always terrified when they are brought up against anything that really is unconventional. On the other hand, your true Bohemian is disgusted if anybody describes him by that word; if there is one word that he detests more than Belgravia, it is Bohemia. No, I shall certainly not go.

Surbiton ... Surbiton. I repeated the name aloud, tasting its flavour. It has always had to me something brackish, something that fills my mind with grey pain and makes me yearn for my old toys. It is curious how the places and streets of London assume a character from one's own moods. All the big roads have a very sharp character of their own. If all other indications were lacking, one might know at once whether the place were Edgware Road or Old Ford Road, simply by the sounds and by the sweep of it. Pull down every house and shop, and still Oxford Street could never pass itself off as Barking Road. But they have, too, a message for you. I still believe that a black dog is waiting to maul me in Stepney Causeway. I still dance with delight down Holborn. Peckham Road still speaks to me of love. And Maida Vale always means music for me, music all the way. I had my first fright in Stepney Causeway. I first walked down Holborn when I had had a streak of luck. I first knew Peckham Road when first I loved. And I first made acquaintance with Maida Vale and its daintily naughty flats at the idiotic age of seventeen, when I was writing verses for composers at five shillings a time. They all lived in Maida Vale, and I spent many evenings in the music-rooms of those worn-out or budding composers and singers who, with the Jews, have made this district their own; so that Maida Vale smells always to me of violets and apple-blossom: it speaks April and May. The deep blue of its night skies is spangled with dancing stars. The very sweep and sway of the road to Kilburn and Cricklewood is an ecstasy, and the windows of the many mansions seem to shine from heaven, so aloof are they.

Surbiton, I repeated. I shall certainly not go. I know it too well. Surbiton is one of those comfortable, solid places, and I loathe comfortable places. I always go to Hastings and avoid St. Leonards. I always go to Margate and fly from Eastbourne. I always go to Southend and give Knocke-sur-Mer a miss. I like Clacton. I detest Cromer. I love Camden Town. I hate Surbiton. Surbiton is very much like Hampstead, except that, while Hampstead is horrible for 362 days of the year, there are three days in the year when it is inhabitable. On Bank Holidays the simple-minded minor poet like myself can live in it. I was there one August Bank Holiday, and, flushed and fatigued with the full-blooded frolic, I had turned aside to "cool dahn" in Heath Street, when I ran against some highly respectable and intelligent friends.

"What!" they said. "You here to-day? Ah! observing, I suppose? Getting copy? Or perhaps as a literary man you come here for Keats ... Coleridge ... and all that?"

"No," I answered. "I come here for boatswings. I come here to throw sticks at coconuts. I come here to buy ticklers to tickle the girls with. I come here for halfpenny skips. I come here for donkey rides. I do not come for Keats. I do not care a damn for Coleridge. I do not come to gloat about Turner or Constable or anybody else who lived at Hampstead a hundred years ago. I come here to enjoy myself--for roundabouts, cockles and whelks, steam-organs--which, after all, are the same thing as Keats or Coleridge. They're Life."

Wherefore I felt determined that I could not and would not go to a whist-drive at Surbiton, when I could get the real thing in Upper Street, Islington.

Then Georgie called for me at the office, and we went out to lunch. Georgie had sold a picture. He had five pounds in his pocket. We went to Maxim's and had lunch. Georgie insisted on sparkling Moselle, and we had two bottles, and three rounds of Cointreau triple sec. By that time it was too late to think of going back to work, so I took Georgie to tea at a literary club, and we talked. I then discovered in a panic that it was half-past six. The whist-drive was at eight, and I had yet to dine and get down to Surbiton. Georgie, by that subtle magnetism which he possesses, had drawn a bunch of the boys about him, and had induced them to make a night of it with him; so we went to Simpson's to eat, and I left them at the table, very merry, and departed to Waterloo. Somewhere, between lunch and dinner, I had unconsciously decided, you see, that I would go to Surbiton. I can't remember just when the change in my attitude took place; but there it was. I went to Surbiton, feeling quite good and almost in love with Surbiton.

The whist-drive was to be held in the local hall, and when I arrived cabs and motors were forming a queue. Each cab vomited some dainty arrangement in lace or black cloth. Everybody was "dressed." (I think I said that it was Surbiton.) Everybody was on best behaviour. Remembering the gang at Simpson's, I felt rather a scab, but a glance in the mirror of the dressing-room reassured me. I recollected some beautiful words of Mr. Mark Sheridan's, "If I'm not clever, thank God, I'm clean." The other fellows in the dressing-room were things of beauty. Their public-school accent, with its vile mispronunciation of the English tongue, would have carried them into the inner circles of any European chancellery. I never heard anything so supernally affecting. I have heard many of our greatest actors and singers, but I have never heard so much music put into simple words, as, "I say, you fellers!"

Everybody was decent. Everybody, you felt sure, could be trusted to do the decent thing, to do whatever was "done," and to leave undone those things that were not "done," and, generally, to be a very decent sort. Their features were clean and firm; they were well-tended. Their minds were clean. They talked clean; and, if they did not display any marked signs of intelligence or imagination, if they had not the largeness of personality for the noble and big things of life, you felt that at least they had not the bent for doing anything dirty. Altogether, a nice set, as insipid people mostly are: what are known in certain circles as Gentlemen.

The girls.... Well, they, too, were a decent sort. Not so decent as the boys, of course, because they were girls. They scanned one another a little too closely. They were too obviously anxious to please. They were too obviously out for the evening. Those who were of the at-home type simpered. They talked in italics. The outdoor type walked like horses. They looked unpleasant, too. I wonder why "Madge" or "Felice" or "Ermyntrude," or some other writer of toilet columns in the ladies' papers, doesn't tell her outdoor girl readers how hideous they look in evening frocks. Why don't they urge them not to uncover themselves? For the outdoor girl has large hands and large arms, both of a beefy red. She has a face and neck tanned by sun and wind, and her ensemble, in a frock cut to the very edge of decency, shows you red hands and forearms, with a sharp dividing line where the white upper arm begins, and a raw face and neck, with the same definite line marking the beginning of white bosom and shoulders. The effect is ridiculous. It is also repulsive. I think they ought to know about it.

The hall was tastefully decorated with white flowers and palms. There was a supper-room, which looked good. The prizes, arranged on a table by the platform, were elegant, well chosen, and of some value. I started at a table with an elderly matron, a very self-conscious Fabian girl, and a rather bored-looking man of middle age, who seemed to be bursting to talk--which is the deadliest of sins at a Surbiton whist-drive. The whist that I play is the very worst whist that has ever been seen. I told my partner so, and she said, "Oh, really!" and asked me if I had had any tennis yet. Then some one begged us to be seated, and, with much arrangements of silks and laces and wraps, we sat down and began to play whist. As I moved from table to table I made no fresh partners. They were differently dressed, but otherwise there was no distinction. They were a very decent sort....

After many hours we stopped playing whist, and broke up for chewing and chatting. The bored-looking man of middle age picked me up, and we took two stray girls in tow for wine and sandwiches. The manners at the supper-crush were elegance itself. The girls smoked cigarettes just a little too defiantly, but they were quite well-bred about it. A lot of well-bred witticisms floated around, with cool laughter and pretty smiles. A knot of girls with two boys talked somewhat decryingly of Shaw and Strindberg; and one caught stray straws of talk about Masefield, Beecham opera, Scriabine, Marinetti, Augustus John. Two girls were giving a concert at the Steinway next week. Others were aiming at the Academy. Another had had a story accepted by the _English Review_. They were a very decent sort.

The bored man plucked at my arm and suggested that we get rid of the girls, and go across to "The Railway" and have one. We did. In the lounge of "The Railway" he told me the one about the lady and taxi. It was very good, but extremely ill-bred. He was a prominent local doctor, so I told him the one about the medical man on the panel, and about the Bishop who put gin in his whisky. Then he told me another ... and another. He remembered the old days at the London.... He said he had had to go to this show because his boy and girl were there. Cards bored him to death, but he liked to be matey with the youngsters. Suppose we had just one more?

We had just one more. From across the way came, very sweet and faint, the sound of laughter and young voices. Some one had started a piano, and the Ballade in A Minor was wandering over Surbiton. I looked into my brandy-glass, and, as I am very young, I rather wanted to cry. I don't know why. It was just the mood ... the soft night, Surbiton, young boys and girls, Chopin, Martell.... I said I had to catch an immediate train to Waterloo, and I drank up and bolted.

* * * * *

The other Saturday morning I met a friend at the Bedford Street Bodega. He said, "Laddie, doing anything to-night?" I said, "No; what's on?"

He said: "Like to help your old uncle?"

I said: "Stand on me."

"Well, it's a little charity show. A Social at Battersea Town Hall. Some local club or tennis-party or some jolly old thing of that sort. All receipts to the local hospital. All the gang are going to do something--kind of informal, you know. I'm the Star. Yes, laddie, I have at last a shop, for one night only. My fee--seven-and-sixpence and tram-fares. All other services gratuitous. No platform. No auditorium. Just a little old sit-round, drinking limp coffee and eating anaemic pastry, and listening. Come?"

I said I would, and we adventured along the dreary Wandsworth Road, down the evil-smelling Lavender Hill, into the strenuous endeavour of Clapham Junction. It was gay with lights and shoppers and parading monkeys. Above us hung a pallid, frosty sky. No stars; no moon; but down in the streets, warmth and cheer and companionship. We called at the blazing, bustling "Falcon," which is much more like a railway-junction than the station itself, and did ourselves a little bit of good, as my professional friend put it. Then we mounted to the gas-lit room where the fun was to take place. We wandered down long, stark passages, seeking our door. We heard voices, but we saw no door.

"Harold," said some one, "sometimes wish you wasn't quite such a fool."

"What's the matter now, Freddie?" asked A Voice.

"Why, you know very well it's ten to eight, and you ain't even pulled the piano out."

"Gaw! Lucky you reminded me. Come on, old chew-the-fat, give us a hand with the musical-box."

There were noises "off," from which it seemed that some one had put something on top of something else. There were noises of some one hitting a piece of wood with another piece of wood.

Then "Damn!" cried A Voice. "Steady on my feet, can't yeh? Bit more to the right. Whoa! Up your end a bit. 'At's it. When was she tuned last? Give us a scale."

Some one flourished, and then a bright door opened, and two young men in shirt-sleeves with tousled brows, appeared.

"Laddie," cried my friend, dramatically, "is this the apartment for the Young People's Society In Connection With The Falcon Road Miss----?"

"That's us!" cried, I imagine, Freddie.

"Then I am Victor Maulever."

"Oh, step inside, won't you. Bit early, I'm 'fraid. Mr. Diplock ain't here yet. But come in. We got a fire going, and it's sort of turning chilly out, eh?"

We stepped in, and Freddie introduced us. "Harold--this is Mr. Maulever, the actor. Mr. Maulever, may I introduce our sec't'ry, Mr. Worple--Mr. Harold Worple, I should say."

Mr. Worple came forward and shook hands. "'Scuse my shirt-sleeves, won't you, sir?"

"Certainly, laddie, cer-tain-ly," said Victor, with that _empressement_ which has earned him so many drinks in Maiden Lane. "Cer-tain-ly. And how are you?"

"Nicely, thanks," said Harold. "How's 'self?"

"So-so, just so-so. Now just tell me about your little affair, so I can get 'em fixed good and plenty before I start. What d'you think'll go best; you know 'em better than I do? Shakespeare--what? Bransby Williams? 'Dream of Eugene Aram'? 'Kissing Cup's Race'? Imitations of Robey, Formby, Chirgwin--what?"

Harold pondered a moment. Then he had an inspiration. "Sort 'em up if I was you, sir. Sort 'em up. Then ev'body'll get something they like, see?"

We entered the clubroom where the Social was to be held--a large, lofty room, genial, clean, and well-lighted, The floor was bare, but a red rug before the leaping fire gave a touch of cosiness. Small tables were scattered everywhere; draughts here, dominoes there, chess elsewhere, cards in other places. Chairs were distributed with a studied air of casual disorder. Newspapers littered a side-bench. The grand piano, by Cadenza of The Emporium, stood diagonally across the left centre, and on it lay the violin-case of Freddie, who told us, with modesty, that he "scraped nows and thens." Along the length of the farther wall stood a large, white-robed table, heaped with coffee-urns, sandwiches, buns, cakes, biscuits, bananas, and other delicacies. All these arrangements were the joint work of Freddie and Harold. At five minutes to eight the company arrived. At first it trickled in by stray couples, but later it swelled to a generous flood, each couple nodding in acknowledgment of the deprecatory greetings of the stewards: "Here we are again, what-oh?" and, in more professional tones: "Gentlemen's Room to the Right, Ladies' Room to the Left!" Victor and myself stood by the fire, Victor receiving bashful but definitely admiring glances from the girls, for he is of the old school, and looks more like Sir Henry Irving even than Mr. H. B. Irving, except that he does not limp. For the first few minutes the atmosphere was cold. The boys obviously wanted to talk to Victor, but they seemed all too shy; so I gave Victor the tip, and with his exquisite courtesy he moved over to a group of the boys and the girls and, with a bow, asked a girl with a baby face, that burnt delightfully red under his attention, if he might take a seat on that settee. In just a minute and a half the thaw set in, and he had the company about him bubbling with laughter and excited comment. As other groups came in from the dressing-rooms they made at once for the centre of attraction, and soon Victor was the centre of a crowd that buzzed about him like bees about a flower, seeking the honey of laughter. I doubt if he was ever so much on the "spot" before. I could see him revelling in it. I could see him telling Rule's about it. But in the middle of his best story, Freddie bustled up.

"Oh, 'scuse me, sir, but I forgot to tell you before. I said sort 'em up, but ... you might just be careful, 'cos the Vicar's dropping in during the evening. I'll give you the word when he's here, so's you'll be sure to hand 'em something quiet. It's all right until he comes. Just give 'em anything you like."

And Victor waved a faded hand, and said, "Righto, laddie, righto. I get you," and turned again to the blushing little girl, who certainly seemed now to be Quite The Lady in her manner of receiving his attentions. Under his expansive mood everybody seen knew everybody else, and all traces of stiffness vanished. The company was a little mixed, and it was inevitable that there should be demarcations of border, breed, and birth. Some were shop-assistants, some were mechanics, some were clerks, some were even Civil Servants; and as all were Christians they were naturally hesitant about loving one another. But Victor broke down all barriers by his large humanity and universal appeal.

Suddenly, there was a hammering on the floor, and a voice called, "Attention, please!" And then--"Duet for violin and piano: Miss Olive Craven and Mr. Fred Parslow."

We broke into little groups, and settled ourselves. Then came a crash of chords from the piano, and a prolonged reiteration of the A while Freddie tuned. They set to work. I heard the opening bars, and I held my breath in dismay. They were going to play a Tchaikowsky Concerto. But the dismay was premature. They _played_; both of them. I do not know whether Freddie was engaged to Olive, but there was a marvellous sympathy uniting them; and, though little technical flaws appeared here and there, the beauty of the work was brought right out. Freddie and Olive were musicians. It was a delicious quarter of an hour. They got a big handful of applause, and then Freddie asked: "Ready, sir?" and Victor said he was, and Freddie said, "What is it?" and conveyed the answer to the portly old fellow who seemed to be president. After a minute or so, during which the girls chattered and giggled and compared ribbons and flounces, he called again for silence, and a tremendous outburst of clapping and stamping followed his announcement: "Mr. Victor Maulever, the famous West End actor, will recite 'Who'll have a Blood Orange?'"

Victor made good with his first three sentences. In the language of his profession, he got 'em with both hands. They rose at him. He had 'em stung to death. He did what he liked with 'em. The girls giggled and kicked little feet. They shamelessly broke into his periods with "_Isn't_ he IT?" and he had to wait while the laughs went round.

When he had finished he got such a hand as I'm sure he never had in the whole of his stage career. They wouldn't let him sit down. They would give him no rest; he must go straight on and give more. So he gave them two more, including his impressions of George Robey, G. P. Huntley, Joe Elvin, R. G. Knowles, and Wilkie Bard singing "Little Grey Home in the West."