Chapter II: Part 2

And with a final wrench the respectable one did get at her. She broke away, turned to a table, and with three swift gestures flung cup, saucer and sauce-boat into the face of her traducer. That finished it. The proprietor had stood aloof while the girls tore each other's faces and bit at uncovered breasts. But the sight of his broken crockery acted as a remover of gravity. He dashed down the steps, pushed aside assistants and advisers, grabbed the nearest girl--the respectable one--round the waist, wrestled her to the top of the marble stairs that lead from the door to the upper restaurant, and then, with a sharp knee-kick, sent her headlong to the bottom, where she lay quiet.

Whereupon her opponent crashed across a table in hysterics, kicking, moaning, laughing and sobbing: "You've killed 'er--yeh beast. You've killed 'er. She's my pal. Oo. Oo. Oooooowh!"

This lasted about a minute. Then, suddenly, she arose, pulled herself together, ran madly down the stairs, picked up her pal, and staggered with her to the street. At once, without a word of comment, the company returned placidly to its eating and drinking; and this affair--an event in the otherwise dull life of Limehouse--was over.

Years ago, such affairs were of daily occurrence, and the West India Dock Road became a legend to frighten children with at night. But the times change. Chinatown is a back number, and there now remains no corner to which one may take the curious visitor thirsting for exotic excitement--unless it be the wilds of Tottenham.

The Chinatown of New York, too, has become respectable. The founder of that colony, Old Nick, died recently, in miserable circumstances, after having acquired thousands of dollars by his enterprise. From the high estate of Founder of the Chinatown he dropped to the position of panhandler, swinging on the ears of his compatriots. About forty years ago, when Mott Street, Pell Street, and Doyers Street were the territory of the Whyos, the Bowery boys and the Dead Rabbits, Old Nick crept stealthily into a small corner. He started a cigar-store in Mott Street, making his own cigars. He was honest, thrifty, and possessed a lust for work. The cigar-store prospered, and soon, feeling lonely, as the only Chink among so many white boys, he passed the word to his countrymen about the big spenders of the district. On his advice, they closed their laundries and came to live alongside, to get their pickings from the dollars that were flying about. Chinatown was started, and rapidly developed, and its atmosphere was sedulously "arranged" for the benefit of conducted tourists from uptown, and the tables rattled with the dice and fluttered with the cards. This success was the beginning of Old Nick's failure. At the tables he lost all: his capital, his store, his home, and his proud position. For a time he managed to survive in fair circumstances; but soon the hatchet men became too numerous, and their tong feuds too deadly, and their gambling tricks too notorious. Police raids and the firm hand of the higher Chinese merchants put a stop to the prosperity of Chinatown, and soon it fell away to nothing, and Old Nick passed his last days on the sporadic charity of a white woman whom he had in happier days befriended.

And to-day Pell Street and Mott Street are as quiet and virtuous as Pennyfields and the Causeway. Coburn and I left the old waterside streets with feelings of dismay, tasting ashes in the mouth. We tried to draw from an old storekeeper, a topside good-fella chap, some expression of his own attitude to present conditions, but with his usual impassivity he passed it over. How could this utterly debased and miserable one who dares to stand before noble and refined ones from Office of Printed Leaves, who have honoured his totally inadequate establishment with symmetrical presences, presume to offer to exalted intelligences utterly insignificant thoughts that find lodging in despicable breast?

Clearly he was handing us the lemon, so we took it, and departed for the more reckless joys of Hammersmith, where Coburn has his home. On the journey back I remembered the drabness we had just left, and then I remembered Limehouse as it was--a pool of Eastern filth and metropolitan squalor; a place where unhappy Lascars, discharged from ships they were only too glad to leave, were at once the prey of rascally lodging-house keepers, mostly English, who fleeced them over the fan-tan tables and then slung them to the dark alleys of the docks. A wicked place; yes, but colourful.

Listen to the following: two extracts from an East End paper of thirty years back:--

THAMES POLICE COURT.

John Lyons, who keeps a common lodging-house, which he has
neglected to register, appeared before Mr. Ingram in answer to a
summons taken out by Inspector Price. J. Kirby, 53A, inspector of
common lodging-houses, stated that on Saturday night last he
visited defendant's house, which was in a most filthy and
dilapidated condition. In the first floor he found a Chinaman
sleeping in a cupboard or small closet, filled with cobwebs. The
wretched creature was without a shirt, and was covered with a few
rags. The Chinaman was apparently in a dying state, and has since
expired. An inquest was held on his remains, and it was proved he
died of fever, and had been most grossly neglected. The room in
which the Chinaman lay was without bedding or furniture. In the
second room he found Aby Callighan, an Irishwoman, who said she
paid 1s. 6d. a week rent. In the third room was Abdallah, a Lascar,
who said he paid 3s. per week, and a Chinaman squatting on a chair
smoking. In the fourth room was Dong Yoke, a Chinaman, who said he
paid 2s. 6d. per week for the privilege of sleeping on the bare
boards; two Lascars on bedsteads smoking opium, and the dead body
of a Lascar lying on the floor, and covered with an old rug. In the
fifth room was an Asiatic seaman, named Peru, who said he paid 3s.
per week, and eleven other Lascars, six of whom were sleeping on
bedsteads, three on the floor, and two on chairs. If the house were
registered, only four persons would be allowed in the room. The
effluvium, caused by smoking opium and the over-crowded state of
the room, was most nauseous and intolerable. In the kitchen, which
was very damp, he found Sedgoo, who said he had to pay 2s. a week,
and eight Chinamen huddled together. The stench here was very bad.
If the house were registered, no one would have been allowed to
inhabit the kitchen at all. He should say the house was quite unfit
for a human habitation. The floors of the rooms, the stairs and
passages were in a filthy and dilapidated condition, covered with
slime, dirt, and all kinds of odious substances.

The men had been hung up with weights tied to their feet; flogged
with a rope; pork, the horror of the Mohammedan, served out to them
to eat, and the insult carried further by violently ramming the
tail of a pig into their mouths and twisting the entrails of the
pig round their necks; they were forced up aloft at the point of
the bayonet, and a shirt all gory with Lascar blood was exhibited
on the trial, and all this proved in evidence. One man leaped
overboard to escape his tormentor; a boat was about to be lowered
to save the drowning man, but it was prohibited, and he was left to
perish. The captain escaped out of the country, forfeiting his bail
and abandoning his ship, leaving his chief officer to be brought
to trial and to undergo punishment for his share of this cruel
transaction.

In those days you might stand in West India Dock Road, on a June evening, in a dusk of blue and silver, the air heavy with the reek of betel nut, chandu and fried fish; the cottages stewing themselves in their viscid heat. Against the skyline rose Limehouse Church, one of the architectural beauties of London. Yellow men and brown ambled about you, and a melancholy guitar tinkled a melody of lost years. Then, were colour and movement; the whisper of slippered feet; the adventurous uncertainty of shadow; heavy mist, which never lifts from Poplar and Limehouse; strange voices creeping from nowhere; and occasionally the rasp of a gramophone delivering records of interminable Chinese dramas. The soul of the Orient wove its spell about you, until, into this evanescent atmosphere, came a Salvation Army chorus bawling a lot of emphatic stuff about glory and blood, or an organ with "It ain't all lavender!" and at once the clamour and reek of the place caught you.

Thirty years ago--that was its time of roses. Then, indeed, things did happen: things so strong that the perfume of them lingers to this day, and one can, remembering them, sometimes sympathize with those who say "LIMEHOUSE" in tones of terror. One of my earliest memories is of the West India Dock Road on a wet November afternoon. A fight was on between a Chink and a Malay. The Chink used a knife in an upward direction, forcefully. The Malay got the Chink down, and jumped with heavy boots on the bleeding yellow face.

Some time ago, when my ways were cast in that district, the boys would loaf at a kind of semi-private music-hall, attached to a public-house, where one of the Westernized Chinks, a San Sam Phung, led the band, and freely admitted all friends who bought him drinks. Every night he climbed to his chair, and his yellow face rose like a November sun over the orchestra-rail. When the conductor's tap turned on the flow of the dozen instruments, which blared rag-tag music, we shifted to the babbling bar and tried to be amused by the show. It was the dustiest thing in entertainment that you can imagine. To this day the hall stinks of snarling song. Dusty jokes we had, dusty music, dusty dresses, dusty girls to wear them, or take them off; and only the flogging of cheap whisky to carry us through the evening. Solemn smokes of cut plug and indifferent cigar swirled in a haze of lilac, and over the opiate air San's fiddle would wail, surging up to the balcony's rim and the cloud of corpse faces that swam above it. More and more mephitic the air would grow, and noisier would become voice and foot and glass; until, with a burst of lights, and the roar of the chord-off from the band, the end would come, and we would tumble out into the great road where were the winking river, and keen air and sanity.

Later, the boys would shuffle along with San Sam Phung to his lodging over a waterside wine-shop, crossing the crazy bridge into the Isle of Dogs. Often, passing at midnight, you might have heard his heart-song trickling from an open window. He cared only for the modern, Italianate stuff, and would play it for hours at a time. Seated in the orchestra, in his second-hand dress-suit and well-oiled hair, he looked about as picturesque as a Bayswater boarding-house. But you should have seen him afterwards, during the day, in his one-room establishment, radiant in spangled dressing-gown and tempestuous hair, a cigarette at his lips, his fiddle at his chin. It was worth sitting up late for. Then his face would shine, if ever a Chink's can, and his bow would tear the soul from the fiddle in a fury of lyricism.

Half his room was filled with a stove, which thrust a long neck of piping ten feet in the wrong direction, and then swerved impulsively to the window. In the corner was a joss. The rest of the room was littered with fiddles and music. Over the stove hung a gaudy view of Amoy. He never tired of talking of Amoy, his home. He longed to get back to it--to flowers, blue waters, white towns. He lived only for the moment when he might tuck his fiddle-case under his arm and return to Amoy, home and beauty. Once started on the tawdry ribaldry which he had to play at the hall, his arm and fingers following mechanically the sheet before him, he would set his fancies free, and, like a flock of rose-winged birds, they took flight to Amoy. Music, for him, was just melody--the graceful surface of things; in a word Amoy. Often he confessed to a terrible fear that he would grow old and die among our swart streets ere he could save enough to return. And he did. Full of the poppy one dark night, he stepped over the edge of a wharf at Millwall. Then, at the inquiry, it was discovered that his nostalgia for Amoy was pure fake. He had never been there. He was born on a boat that crawled up-river one foggy morning, and had never for a day gone out of London.

There were many other delightful creatures of Limehouse whose names lie persistently on the memory. There was Afong, a chimpanzee who ran a pen-yen joint. There was Chinese Emma, in whose establishment one could go "sleigh-riding." There was Shaik Boxhoo, a gentleman who did unpleasant things, and finally got religion and other advantages over his less wily brothers, who got only the jug. Faults they had in plenty, these throwbacks, but their faults were original. Every one of them was a bit of sharp-flavoured character, individual and distinct.

In those days there was a waste patch of wan grass, called The Gardens, near the Quarter, and something like a band performed there once a week. O Carnival, Carnival! There the local crowd would go, and there, to the music of dear Verdi, light feet would clatter about the asphalt walk, and there would happen what happens every Sunday night in those parts of London where are parks, promenades, bandstands and monkeys' parades. In the hot spangled dusk, the groups of girls, brave with best frocks and daring ribbons, would fling their love and their laughter to all who would have them. Through the plaintive music--poor Verdi! how like a wheezy music-box his crinoline melodies sounded, even then!--would swim little ripples of laughter when the girls were caressing or being caressed; and always the lisp of feet and the whisk of darling frocks kissing little black shoes.

Near by was the old "Royal Sovereign," which had a skittle-alley. There would gather the lousy Lascars, and there they would roll, bowl or pitch. Then they would swill. Later, they would roll, bowl or pitch, with a skinful of gin, through the reeling streets to whichever boat might claim them.

The black Lascars, unlike their yellow mates, are mostly disagreeable people. There was, in those days, but one of them who even approached affability. He was something of a Limehouse Wonder, for, in a sudden fight over spilt beer, he showed amazing aptitude not only with his fists, but also in ringcraft. Chuck Lightfoot, a local sport, happened to see him, and took him in hand, and for some years he stayed in Shadwell, putting one after another of the local lads to sleep. He finished his ring career in a dockside saloon by knocking out an offending white man who had chipped him about his colour. It was a foul blow, and the man died. Pennyfields Polly got twelve months, and when he came out he started on the poppy and the snow, for he was not allowed to fight again, and life held nothing else for him. His friends tried to dissuade him, on the ground that he was ruining his health--a sensible argument to put to a man who had no interest in life; they might as well have told an Arctic explorer, who had lost the trail, that his tie was creeping up the back of his neck.

It is curious how the boys cling to you after a brief interchange of hospitalities. You drop into a beer-shack one evening, and you are sure to find a friend. One makes so easily in these parts a connection, salutations, fugitive intimacy. You are suddenly saluted, it may be by that good old friend, Mr. Lo, the poor Indian, or John Sam Ling Lee. Vaguely you recall the name. Yes; you stood him a drink, some ten years ago. Where has he been? Oh, he found a boat ... went round the Horn ... stranded at Lima ... been in Cuba some time ... got to Swatow later ... might stay in London ... might get a boat on Saturday.

But these casual encounters are now hardly to be had. So many boys, so many places have disappeared. Blue Gate Fields, scene of many an Asiatic demonism, is gone. The "Royal Sovereign"--the _old_ "Royal Sovereign"--is gone, and the Home for Asiatics reigns in its stead. The hop-shacks about the Poplar arches and the closed courtyards and their one-story cottages are no more. To-day--as I have said three times already; stop me if I say it again--the glamorous shame of Chinatown has departed. Nothing remains save tradition, which now and then is fanned into life by such a case as that of the drugged actress. Yet you may still find people who journey fearfully to Limehouse, and spend money in its shops and restaurants, and suffer their self-manufactured excitements while sojourning in its somnolent streets among the respectable sons of Canton. The boys will not thank me for robbing them of the soft marks who pay twenty shillings for a jade bangle, of the kind sold in a sixpenny-halfpenny bazaar; so, anticipating their celestial disapproval, this miserable prostrates himself and remains bowed for their gracious pardon, and begs to be permitted to say that the entirely inadequate benedictions of this one will be upon them until the waning of the last moon.

SOHO CARRIES ON

Soho! Soho!

Joyous syllables, in early times expressive of the delights of the chase, and even to-day carrying an echo of nights of festivity, though an echo only. How many thousand of provincials, seeing London, have been drawn to those odourous byways that thrust themselves so briskly through the staid pleasure-land of the West End--Greek Street, Frith Street, Dean Street, Old Compton Street: a series of interjections breaking a dull paragraph--where they might catch the true Latin temper and bear away to the smoking-rooms of country Conservative clubs fulsome tales that have made Soho already a legend. Indeed, I know one cautious lad from Yorkshire, whose creed is that You Never Know and You Can't Be Too Careful, who always furnishes himself with a loaded revolver when dining with a town friend in Soho. I am not one to look sourly upon the simple pleasures of the poor; I do not begrudge him his concocted dish of thrills. I only mention this trick of his because it proves again the strange resurrective powers of an oft-buried lie. You may sweep, you may garnish Soho if you will; but the scent of adventure will hang round it still.

But to-day the scent is very faint. The streets that once rang with laughter and prodigal talk are in A.D. 1917 charged with gloom; their gentle noise is pitched in the minor key. These morsels of the South, shovelled into the swart melancholies of central London, have lost their happy summer tone. Charing Cross Road was always a streak of misery, but, on the most leaden day, its side streets gave an impression of light. Lord knows whence came the light. Not from the skies. Perhaps from the indolently vivacious loungers; perhaps from the flower-boxes on the window-sills, or the variegated shops bowered with pendant polonies, in rainbow wrappings of tinfoil, and flasks of Chianti. One always walked down Old Compton Street with a lilt, as to some carnival tune. Nothing mattered. There were macaroni and spaghetti to eat, and Chianti to drink; dishes of ravioli; cigars at a halfpenny a time and cigarettes at six a penny; copies of frivolous comic-papers; and delicate glasses of lire, a liqueur that carried you at the first sip to the green-hued Mediterranean. The very smell of the place was the smell of those lovable little towns of the Midi.

But all is now changed. Gone are the shilling tables-d'hôte and their ravishing dishes. Gone is the pint of vin ordinaire at tenpence. Will they ever come again, those gigantic, lamp-lit evenings, those Homeric bob's-worths of hors-d'oeuvre, soup, omelette, chicken, cheese and coffee? Shall we ever again cross Oxford Street to the old German Quarter and drink their excellent Pilsener and Munchner, in heartening steins, and eat their leber-wurst sandwiches, and smoke their long, thin cigars? Or seat ourselves in the Schweitzerhof, where four wonderful dishes were placed before you at a cost of tenpence by some dastard spy, in the pay of that invisible-cloak artist, the English Bolo?--who doubtless reported to Berlin our conversation about Phyllis Monkman's hair and Billy Merson's technique. Nay, I think not. The blight of civilization is upon Soho. Many once cosy and memorable cafés are closed. Other places have altered their note and become uncomfortably English; while those that retain their atmosphere and their customers have considerably changed their menu and cuisine. One-and-ninepence is the lowest charge for a table-d'hôte--and pretty poor hunting at that. The old elaborate half-crown dinners are now less elaborate and cost four shillings. And the wine-lists--well, wouldn't they knock poor Omar off his perch? I don't know who bought Omar's drinks, or whether he paid for his own, but if he lived in Soho to-day he'd have a pretty thin time either way--unless the factory price for tents had increased in proportion with other things.

Gone, too, is the delicious atmosphere of _laisser-faire_ that made Soho a refreshment of the soul for the visitors from Streatham and Ealing. Soho's patrons to-day have a furtive, guilty look about them. You see, they are trying to be happy in war-time. No more do you see in the cafés the cold-eyed anarchists and the petty bourgeois and artisans from the foreign warehouses of the locality. In their place are heavy-eyed women, placid and monosyllabic, and much khaki and horizon blue. Many of the British soldiers, officers and privates, are men who have not yet been out, and are experimenting with their French among the French girls who have taken the places of the swift-footed, gestic Luigi, François or Alphonse; others have come from France, where they have discovered the piquancy of French cooking, and desire no more the solidities of the "old English" chop-house.

Over all is an atmosphere of restraint. Gone are the furious argument and the preposterous accord. Gone are the colour and the loud lights and the evening noise. Soho is marking time, until the good days return--if ever. Not in 1917 do you see Old Compton Street as a line of warm and fragrant café-windows; instead, you stumble drunkenly through a dim, murky lane, and take your chance by pushing the first black door that exudes a smell of food. Gone, too, are those exotic foods that brought such zest to the jaded palate. The macaroni and spaghetti now being manufactured in London are poor substitutes for the real thing, being served in long, flat strips instead of in the graceful pipe form of other days. Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, Gruyère, Port Salut, Strachini and other enchanting cheeses are unobtainable; and you may cry in vain for edible snails and the savoury stew of frogs' legs. True, the Chinese café in Regent Street can furnish for the adventurous stomach such trifles as black eggs (guaranteed thirty years old), sharks' fins at seven shillings a portion, stewed seaweed, bamboo shoots, and sweet birds'-nests; but Regent Street is beyond the bounds of Soho.

Nevertheless, if you attend carefully, and if you are lucky, you may still catch in Old Compton Street a faint echo of its graces and picturesque melancholy. You may still see and hear the sombre Yid, the furious Italian, the yodelling Swiss, and the deprecating French, hanging about the dozen or so coffee-bars that have appeared since 1914. A few of these places existed in certain corners of London long before that date, but it is only lately that the Londoner has discovered them and called for more. The Londoner--I offer this fact to all students of national traits--must always lean when taking his refreshment. Certain gay and festive gentlemen, who constitute an instrument of order called the Central Control Board, forbid him to lean in those places where, of old, he was accustomed to lean; at any rate, he is only allowed to lean during certain defined hours. You might think that he would have gladly availed himself of this opportunity for resting awhile by sitting at a marble-topped table and drinking coffee or tea, or--horrid thought!--cocoa. But no; he isn't happy unless he leans over his refreshment; and the café-bar has supplied his demands. There is something in leaning against a bar which entirely changes one's outlook. You may sit at a table and drink whisky-and-soda, and yet not achieve a tithe of the expansiveness that is yours when you are leaning against a bar and drinking dispiriting stuff like coffee or sirop. Maybe the physical attitude reacts on the mind, and tightens up certain cords or sinews, or eases the blood-pressure; anyway, fears, doubts, and cautions seem to vanish in these little corners of France, and momentarily the old animation of Soho returns.

In these places you may perchance yet capture for a fleeting space the will-o'-the-wisperie of other days: movement and festal colour; laughter and quick tears; the warm jest and the darkling mystery that epitomize the city of all cities; and the wanton, rose-winged graces that flutter about the fair head of M'selle Lolotte, as she hands you your café nature and an April smile for sweetening, carry to you a breath of the glitter and spaciousness of old time. You do not know Lolotte, perhaps! Thousand commiserations, M'sieu! What damage! Is Lolotte lovely and delicate? But of a loveliness of the most ravishing! The shining hair and the eyes of the most disturbing! Lolotte is in direct descent from Mimi Pinson, half angel and half puss.

Soldiers of all the Allied armies gather about her crescent-shaped bar after half-past nine of an evening. The floor is sawdusted. The counter is sloppy with overflows of coffee. Lips and nose receive from the air that bitter tang derived only from the smoke of Maryland tobacco. The varied uniforms of the patrons make a harmony of debonair gaiety with the many-coloured bottles of cordials and sirops.

"_Pardon, m'sieu!_" cries the poilu, as he accidentally jogs the arm by which Sergeant Michael Cassidy is raising his coffee-cup.

"_Oh, sarner fairy hang, mossoo! Moselle, donnay mwaw urn Granny Dean._"

"_M'sieu parle français, alors?_"

"_Ah, oui. Jer parle urn purr._"

And another supporting column is added to the structure of the Entente.

Over in the corner stands a little fat fellow. That corner belongs to him by right of three years' occupation. He is 'Ockington from a nearby printing works. Ask 'Ockington what he thinks about these 'ere coffee-bars.

"Ah," he'll say, "I like these Frenchified caffies. Grand idea, if you ask me. Makes yeh feel as though you was abroad-like. Gives yeh that Lazy-Fare feelin'. I bin abroad, y'know. Dessay you 'ave, too, shouldn't wonder. I don't blame yeh. See what yeh can while yeh can, 'ats what I say. My young Sid went over to Paris one Bang Koliday, 'fore the war, an' he come back as different again. Yerce, I'm all fer the French caffies, I am. Nicely got up, I think. Good meoggerny counter; and this floor and the walls--all done in that what-d'ye call it--mosey-ac. What I alwis say is this: the French is a gay nation. Gay. And you feel it 'ere, doncher? Sort of cheers you up, like, if yer know what I mean, to drop in 'ere for a minute or two.... Year or two ago, now, after a rush job at the Works, I used to stop at a coffee-stall on me way 'ome late at night, an' 'ave a penny cup o' swipes--yerce, an' glad _of_ it. But the difference in the stuff they give yer 'ere--don't it drink lovely and smooth?"

Then his monologue is interrupted by the electric piano, which some one has fed with pennies; and your ear is charmed or tortured by the latest revue music or old favourites from Paris and Naples--"Marguerite," "Sous les ponts de Paris," "Monaco," the Tripoli March. If you appear interested in the piano, whose voice Lolotte loves, she will offer to toss you for the next penn'orth. Never does she lose. She wins by the simple trick of snatching your penny away the moment you lift your hand from it, and gurgling delightedly at your discomfiture.

No wonder the coffee-bar has become such a feature of London life in this time of war. Leaning, in Lolotte's bar, is a real and not a forced pleasure. In the old days one could lean and absorb the drink of one's choice; but amid what company and with what service! Who could possibly desire to exchange fatigued inanities with the vacuous vulgarities who administer the ordinary London bar; who seem, like telephone girls, to have taken lessons from some insane teacher of elocution, with their "Nooh riarly?" expressive of incredulity; and their "Is yewers a Scartch, Mr. Iggulden?" But in Lolotte's bar, talk is bright, sometimes distinctly clever, and one lingers over one's coffee, chaffering with her for--well, ask 'Ockington how long he stays.

But Lolotte is not always gay. Sometimes she will tell you stories of Paris. There is a terrible story which she tells when she is feeling triste. It is the story of a girl friend of hers with whom she worked in Paris. The girl grew ill; lost her work; and earned her living by the only possible means, until she grew too ill for that. One night Lolotte met her wearily walking the streets. She had been without food for two days, and had that morning been turned from her lodging. Suddenly, as they passed a florist's, she darted through its doors and inquired the price of some opulent blooms at the further end of the shop. The shop-man turned towards them, and, as he turned, she dexterously snatched a bunch of white violets from a vase on the counter. The price of the orchids, she decided, was too high, and she came out.

Lolotte, who had seen the trick from the doorway, inquired the reason for the theft. And the answer was:

"_Eh, bien; il faut avoir quelquechose quand on va rencontrer le bon Dieu._"

Two days later her body, with a bunch of white violets fastened at the neck, was recovered from the Seine.

OUT OF TOWN

It was an empty day, in the early part of the year, and I was its very idle singer; so idle that I was beginning to wonder whether there would be any Sunday dinner for me. I took stock of my possessions in coin, and found one-and-ten-pence-halfpenny. Was I downhearted? Yes. But I didn't worry, for when things are at their worst, my habit is always to fold my hands and trust. Something always happens.

Something happened on this occasion: a double knock at the door and a telegram. It was from the most enlightened London publisher, whose firm has done so much in the way of encouraging young writers, and it asked me to call at once. I did so.

"Like to go to Monte Carlo?" he asked.

When I had recovered from the swoon, I begged him to ask another.

"Here's an American millionaire," he said, "writing from Monte Carlo. He wants to write a book, and he wants some assistance. How would it suit you?"

I said it would suit me like a Savile Row outfit of clothes.

"When can you go?"

"Any old time."

"Right. You'd better wire him, and tell him I told you to. Don't let yourself go cheap. Good-bye."

I didn't fall on his neck in an outburst of gratitude: he wouldn't have liked it. But I yodelled and chirruped all the way to the nearest post-office, having touched a friend for ten shillings on the strength of the stunt. All that day and the next, telegrams passed between Monte Carlo and Balham. I asked a noble salary and expenses, and a wire came back: "Start at once." I replied: "No money." Ten pounds were delivered at my doorstep next morning, with the repeated message "Start at once."

But starting at once, in war-time, was not so easily done. There was a passport to get. That meant three days' lounging in a little wooden hut in the yard of the Foreign Office. Having got the passport, I spent four hours in a queue outside the French Consulate before I could get it _visé_. Six days after the first telegram, I stood shivering on Victoria Station at seven o'clock of a cadaverous January morning. Having been well and truly searched in another little hut, and having kissed the book, and sworn full-flavoured oaths about correspondence, and thought of a number, and added four to it, I was allowed to board the train.

Half the British Army was on that train, and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome and myself were the only civilians in our carriage. You will rightly guess that it was a lively journey. I had always wondered, in peace-time, why the jew's-harp was invented. I understand now. In the histories of this war, the jew's-harp will take as romantic a place as the pipes of Lucknow or the drums of Oude in the histories of other wars.

At Folkestone there were more searchings, more stamping of passports, more papers and "permissions" to bulk one's pocket and perplex one's mind. On the boat, standing-room only, and when a gestic stewardess sought seats for a fond mother and five little ones in the ladies' saloon, she found all places occupied by khaki figures stretched at full length.

"_Seulement les dames!_" she cried, pointing to a notice over the door.

"_Aha, madame!_" said a stalwart Australian, "_mais c'est la guerre!_" In other words "Aubrey Llewellyn Coventry Fell to you!"

Yes, it was war; and it was tactfully suggested to us by the crew, for, when we were clear of Folkestone harbour, all boats were slung out, and lifeboats were placed in tragic heaps on either side. It was a cold, angry sea, and stewards and stewardesses became aggressively prophetic about the fine crossing that we were to have. Germany had a few days before declared her first blockade of the English coast, and every speck on the sea became dreadfully portentous. At mid-Channel a destroyer stood in to us and ran up a stream of signals.

"This is it," chortled a Cockney, between violent trips to the side; "this is it! Now we're for it!"

Next moment I got a push in the back, and I thought it had come. But it was the elbow of one of the crew who had rushed forward, and was sorting bits of bunting from an impossibly tangled heap at my side. In about two seconds, he found what he wanted and hauled at a rope. Up went what looked like a patchwork counterpane, until the breeze caught it, when it became a string of shapes and colours, straining deliriously against its fastenings. Then down it came; then up again; then down; then up; then down; and that was the end of that conversation. I don't know what it signified, but half an hour later we were in Boulogne harbour.

More comic business with papers; then to the train. Yes, it was war. The bridge over the Oise had not then been repaired; so we crawled to Paris by an absurdly crab-like route. We left Boulogne just after twelve. We reached Paris at ten o'clock at night. There was no food on the train, and from six o'clock that morning, when I had had a swift cup of tea, until nearly midnight I got nothing in the way of refreshment. But who cared? I was going South to meet an American millionaire, and I had money in my pocket.

I arrived at Paris too late to connect with that night's P.L.M. express, so I had twenty-four hours to kill. I strolled idly about, and found Paris very little changed. There was an air about the people of irritation, of questioning, of petulant suffering; they had a manner expressive of "_A quoi bon?_" Somebody in high quarters had brought this thing upon them. Somebody in high quarters might rescue them from its evils--or might not. They moved like stricken animals, their habitual melancholy, which is often unnoticed because it is overlaid with vivacity, now permanently in possession.

I caught the night express to Monte Carlo. Our carriage contained eight sombre people, and the corridors were strewn with sleep-stupid soldiers. I was one sardine among many, and, with a twenty-seven-hour journey before me in this overheated, hermetically sealed sardine-tin, I began to think what a fool I had been to make this absurd journey to a place that was strange to me; to meet a millionaire about whom I knew nothing, and who might have changed his mind, millionaire-fashion, and left Monte Carlo by the time I got there; and to undertake a job which I might find, on examination, was beyond me.

Then, with a French girl's head on one shoulder, and my other twisted at an impossible angle into the window-frame, I went to sleep and awoke at Lyons, with a horrible headache and an unbearable mouth, the result of the boiling and over-spiced soup I had swallowed the night before. I think we all hated each other. It was impossible to wash or arrange oneself decently, and again there was no food on the train. But, as only the Latin mind can, we made the best of it and pretended that it was funny. Girls and men, complete strangers, drooped in abandonment against one another, or reclined on unknown necks. A young married couple behaved in a way that at other times would have meant a divorce. The husband rested his sagging head on the bosom of a stout matron, and a poilu stretched a rug across his knees and made a comfortable pillow for the little wife. _N'importe. C'était la guerre._

On the platform at Lyons were groups of French Red Cross girls with wagons of coffee. This coffee was for the soldiers, but they handed it round impartially to civilians and soldiers alike, and those who cared could drop a few sous into the collecting basin. That coffee was the sweetest draught I had ever swallowed.

At Marseilles it was bright morning, and I was lucky enough to get a pannier, at a trifling cost of seven francs. These panniers are no meal for a hungry man. They contain a bone of chicken, a scrap of ham, a corner of Gruyère, a stick of bread (that surely was made by the firm that put the sand in sandwich), a half-bottle of sour white wine, a bottle of the eternal Vichy, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.

I had just finished it when we rolled into Toulon, and there I got my first glimpse of the true, warm South. I suffered a curious sense of "coming home." I had not known it, but all my childish dreams must have had for their background this coloured South, for, the moment it spread itself before me, bits of Verdi melodies ran through my heart and brain and I danced a double-shuffle. Since I was old enough to handle a fiddle, all music has interpreted itself to me in a visualization of blue seas, white coasts, green palms with lemon and nectarine dancing through them, and noisy, sun-bright towns, and swart faces and languorous and joyfully dirty people. The keenest sense of being at home came later, when, at Monte Carlo, I met Giacomo Puccini, the hero of my young days, whose music had illumined so many dark moments of my City slavery; who is in the direct line of succession from Verdi.

This first visit to Monte Carlo showed me Monte Carlo as she never was before. Half the hotels were closed or turned into hospitals, since all the German hotel-staffs had been packed home. In other times it would have been "the season," but now there was everywhere a sense of emptiness. Wounded British and French officers paraded the Terrace; disabled blacks from Algeria were on every hotel verandah or wandering aimlessly about the hilly streets with a sad air of being lost. The Casino was open, but it closed at eleven, and all the cafés closed with it; the former happy night-life had been nipped off short. At midnight the place was dead.

I was accommodated at an Italian _pension_ in Beausoleil, which, in peace-times, was patronized by music-hall artists working the Beausoleil casino. The Casino had been turned into a barracks, but one or two Italian danseuses from the cabarets of San Remo were taking a brief rest, so that the days were less tiresome than they might have been. My millionaire was a charming man, who used my services but a few hours each day. Then I could dally with the sunshine and the Chianti and the breaking seas about the Condamine.

When I next want a cheap holiday I shan't go to Brighton, or Eastbourne, or Cromer; I shall go to Monte Carlo. The dear Italian Mama who kept the _pension_ treated me like a prince for thirty-five francs a week. I had a large bedroom, with four windows looking to the Alpes Maritimes, and a huge, downy French bed; I had coffee and roll in the morning; a four-course lunch of Italian dishes, with a bottle of Chianti or Barolo; and a five-course dinner, again with a bottle. Those meals were the most delightful I have ever taken. The windows of the dining-room were flung wide to the Mediterranean, and between courses we could bask on the verandah while one of the girls would touch the guitar, the mandolin, or the accordion (sometimes we had all three going at once), in effervescent Neapolitan melody. My contribution to these meal-time entertainments was an English song of which they never tired: "The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carr-rr-lo!" Sometimes it was demanded five or six times in an evening. Immediately I arrived I was properly embraced and kissed by Mama and the three girls, and these rapturous kisses seemed to be part of the etiquette of the establishment, for they happened every morning and after all meals. M'selle Lola was allotted to me; a blonde Italian, afire with mischief and loving-kindness and little delicacies of affection.

On the third day of my visit I met a kindred soul, the wireless operator from the Prince of Monaco's yacht, _L'Hirondelle_, which was lying in the harbour on loan to the French Government. He was a bright youth; had been many times on long cruises with the yacht, and spoke English which was as good as my French was bad. We had some delightful "noces" together, and it was in his company that I met and had talks with Caruso at the Café de Paris. An opera season was running at the Casino, and on opera nights the café remained open until a little past midnight. After the evening's work Caruso would drop into the café and talk with everybody. His naïve gratification when I told him how I had saved money for weeks, and had waited hours at the gallery door of Covent Garden to hear him sing, was delightful to witness. Prince George of Serbia was also there, recuperating; but though the Terrace at mid-day was crowded and pleasantly bright, I was told that against the Terrace in the old seasons it was miserably dull.

On ordinary nights, when we felt still fresh at eleven o'clock, we would take a car to Mentone, cross the frontier into Italy (which was not then at war), and spend a few cheery hours at Bordighera or San Remo, which were nightless. Then back to Monte Carlo at about five, to bed, and up again at nine, with no feeling of fatigue. It was curious to note how, under that sharp sunshine and keen night sky, all moral values were changed, or wholly obliterated. The first breath of the youthful company at the _pension_ blew all London cobwebs away. It was all so abandoned, yet so sweet and wholesome; and, by contrast, the English seaside resort, where the girls play at "letting themselves go," was a crude and shameful farce. Whatever happened at Monaco seemed to be right; nothing was wrong except frigidity and unkindness.

My dear Italian Mama said to me one evening at dinner, when I had (in the English sense) disgraced myself by a remark straight from the heart:--

"_M'sieu Thomas, on m'a dit que les anglais ont froid. C'est pas vrai!_"

No, dear Mamina; but it was true before I stayed at the Pension Poggio at Beausoleil.

My work with the millionaire spread itself over two months; then, with a fat wad, I was free to return. It was not until I went to the Consulate to get my passport _visé_ that I discovered how many war-time laws of France I had broken. I had not registered myself on arrival; I had not reported myself periodically; and I had not obtained a _permis de séjour_. The Consul informed me cheerfully that heaps of trouble would be waiting for me when I went to the Mairie to get my _laissez-passer_, without which I could not buy a railway ticket. However, after being stood in a corner for two hours until all other travellers had received attention, a _laissez-passer_ was thrown at me on my undertaking to leave Monte Carlo that night. A gendarme accompanied me to the station to see that I did so.

At Paris, a few hours spent with the police, the military, Hôtel-de-Ville, and the British Consulate resulted in permission to kick my heels there for a day or so.

A few mornings later arrived the millionaire's precious MS., which I had left behind so that he might revise it, with a message to hustle. I hustled. I reached London the same night. Next morning I negotiated with a publisher. In two days it was in the printer's hands and in a fortnight it was in the bookshops; and I was again out of a job.

IN SEARCH OF A SHOW

I have been looking for a needle in a haystack, and I have not found it. I have been looking for an hour's true entertainment in London's theatres and music-halls during this spring season of 1918.

The tag of Mr. Gus Elen's old song, "'E dunno where 'e are," very aptly describes the condition of the regular theatre-goer to-day. What would the old laddies of the Bodega-cheese days have thought, had any prophesied that at one swift step the Oxford and the Pavilion would simultaneously move into the ranks of the "legitimate;" that His Majesty's Theatre would be running a pantomime; that smoking would be allowed in the Lyceum, the Comedy, the Vaudeville, and the Garrick? Many people have lost their individuality by being merged into one or other war-movement since 1914; many streets have entirely lost those distinctive features which enable us to recognize them at one glance or by sound or smell; but nowhere has the war more completely smashed personality than in theatre-land.

In the old days (one must use that pathetic phrase in speaking of ante-1914), the visitor to London knew precisely the type of entertainment and the type of audience he would find at any given establishment. To-day, one figures his bewilderment--verily, 'e dunno where 'e are. Formerly, he could be sure that at the Garrick he would find Mr. Bourchier playing a Bourchieresque part. At His Majesty's he would find just what he wanted--or would want what he found--for going to His Majesty's was not a matter of dropping in: it was a pious function. At the Alhambra or the Empire he would be sure of finding excellent ballet at about ten o'clock, when he could sip his drink, stroll round the promenade, and leave when he felt like it. At the time I write he finds Mr. Bourchier playing low comedy at a transformed music-hall, and at the Alhambra or the Empire he finds a suburban crowd, neatly seated in rows--father, mother and flappers--watching a quite innocuous entertainment.

Managers were long wont to classify in their minds the "Garrick" audience, the "Daly" audience, the "Adelphi" audience, the "Haymarket" audience; and plays would be refused by a manager on the ground that "our audience wouldn't stand it; try the Lyric." To-day they are all in the melting-pot, and the poor habitué of the So-and-so Theatre has to take what is given him, and be mighty thankful for it.

At one time I loved a show, however cheap its kind; but in these days, after visiting a war-time show and suffering the feeling of assisting at some forbidden rite, I always wish I had wasted the evening in some other manner. Since 1914 the theatres have not produced one show that any sober man would pay two pence to see. The stuff that has been produced has paid its way because the bulk of the public is drunk--with war or overwork. The story of the stage since 1914 may be given in one word--"Punk." Knowing that we are all too preoccupied with solemn affairs to examine very closely our money's-worth, and knowing that the boys on leave are not likely to be too hypercritical, the theatrical money-lords--with one noble exception--have taken advantage of the situation to fub us off with any old store-room rubbish. We have dozens of genuine music-hall comedians on the stage to-day, but they are all slacking. Some of them get absorbed by West End shows, and at once, when they appear on the gigantic American stages of some of our modern theatres, surrounded by crowds of elephantine women, they lose whatever character and spontaneity they had. Others give the bulk of their time and brains to earning cheap notoriety by raising funds for charities or cultivating allotments--both commendable activities, but not compatible with the serious business of cheering the public. Gradually, the individual is being frozen out, and the stages are loaded with crowds of horsey, child-aping women, called by courtesy a beauty chorus; the show being called, also by courtesy, a revue. These shows resemble a revue as much as the short stories of popular magazines resemble a _conte_. They dazzle the eye and blast the ear, and, instead of entertaining, exhaust.

The artists have, allowing for human nature, done their best under trying circumstances; but playing to an audience of overseas khaki and tired working-people, who applaud their most maladroit japes, has had the effect of wearing them down. They no longer work. They take the easiest way, knowing that any remark about the Kaiser, Old Bill, meat-cards, or the Better 'Ole is sure of a laugh.

One solitary example of money's-worth in war-time I found--but that is outside the lists of vaudeville or drama. I mean Sir Thomas Beecham's operative enterprise. Beginning, in 1915, to develop his previous tentative experiments--fighting against indifference, prejudice, often against active opposition--he went steadily on; and it is he whom our men must thank if, on returning, they find in England something besides factories and barracks. There is no man who, amid this welter of blood and hate, has performed work of higher national importance. While every effort was made to stifle or stultify every movement that made towards sanity and vision, he went doggedly forward, striving to save from the wreckage some trifle of sweetness and loveliness for those who have ears to hear. Had certain good people had their way, he, his ideals, his singers, his orchestra and his band instruments would have been flung into the general cesspool, to lie there and rot. But he won through; and I think only that enemy of civilization, the screaming, flag-wagging patriot, will disagree with a famous Major-General who, in full war-paint, stood at my side in the theatre bar between the acts of _Tristan_, and, turning upon a querulous civilian who had snorted against Wagner, cried angrily:--

"Nonsense, sir, nonsense. War is war. And music is music."

After years of struggling, Beecham has made it possible for an English singer to sing to English audiences under his English name, and has proved what theatrical and music-hall managers never attempt to prove: that England can produce her own native talent in music and drama, without taking the fourth-rate and fifth-rate, as well as the first-rate, material of America and the Continent. He has shown himself at once a philanthropist and a patriot. In none of his productions do we find signs of that cheap philosophy that "anything will do for war-time." Before the arrival of his company, opera in London was a mere social function which (except from the point of view of the galleryite) had little to do with music. People went to Covent Garden not to listen to music, but to be seen; just as they went to the Savoy or to the Carlton to be seen, not to procure nourishment. The Beecham opera is first and last a matter of music.