lighted only by the fires, which cast black velvet shadows
in the corners. Ragged washing hung on strings from the
ceiling. Red-lit men, stevedores mostly, moved about the
fires with cooking-pots; some of them were quite naked,
for they had been laundering and were waiting for their
clothes to dry. At night there were games of nap and
draughts, and songs"I'm a chap what's done wrong by my
parents," was a favourite, and so was another popular song
about a shipwreck. Sometimes late at night men would
come in with a pail of winkles they had bought cheap, and
share them out. There was a general sharing of food, and it
was taken for granted to feed men who were out
of work. A little pale, wizened creature, obviously
dying, referred to as "pore Brown, bin under the doctor
and cut open three times," was regularly fed by the
others.
Two or three of the lodgers were old-age pensioners.
Till meeting them I had never realised that there are
people in England who live on nothing but the oldage
pension of ten shillings a week. None of these old men
had any other resource whatever. One of them was
talkative, and I asked him how he managed to exist. He
said:
"Well, there's ninepence a night for yer kip-that's five
an' threepence a week. Then there's threepence on
Saturday for a shave-that's five an' six. Then say you 'as
a 'aircut once a month for sixpence-that's another
three'apence a week. So you 'as about four an' fourpence
for food an' bacca."
He could imagine no other expenses. His food was
bread and margarine and tea-towards the end of the week
dry bread and tea without milk-and perhaps he got his
clothes from charity. He seemed contented, valuing his
bed and fire more than food. But, with an income of ten
shillings a week, to spend money on a shave-it is awe-
inspiring.
All day I loafed in the streets, east as far as Wapping,
west as far as Whitechapel. It was queer after Paris;
everything was so much cleaner and quieter and drearier.
One missed the scream of the trams, and the noisy,
festering life of the back streets, and the armed men
clattering through the squares. The crowds were better
dressed and the faces comelier and milder and more
alike, without that fierce individuality and malice of the
French. There was less drunkenness, and less dirt, and
less quarrelling, and more idling. Knots of men stood at
all the corners, slightly underfed, but kept
going by the tea-and-two-slices which the Londoner
swallows every two hours. One seemed to breathe a less
feverish air than in Paris. It was the land of the tea urn
and the Labour Exchange, as Paris is the land of the bistro
and the sweatshop.
It was interesting to watch the crowds. The East
London women are pretty (it is the mixture of blood,
perhaps), and Limehouse was sprinkled with Orientals -
Chinamen, Chittagonian lascars, Dravidians selling silk
scarves, even a few Sikhs, come goodness knows how.
Here and there were street meetings. In Whitechapel
somebody called The Singing Evangel undertook to save
you from hell for the charge of sixpence. In the East
India Dock Road the Salvation Army were holding a
service. They were singing "Anybody here like sneaking
Judas?" to the tune of "What's to be done with a drunken
sailor?" On Tower Hill two Mormons were trying to
address a meeting. Round their platform struggled a mob
of men, shouting and interrupting. Someone was
denouncing them for polygamists. A lame, bearded man,
evidently an atheist, had heard the word God and was
heckling angrily. There was a confused uproar of voices.
"My dear friends, if you would only let us finish what
we were saying-!-That's right, give 'em a say. Don't get
on the argue!-No, no, you answer me. Can you
show me
God? You show 'im me, then I'll believe in 'im.-Oh, shut
up, don't keep interrupting of 'em!Interrupt yourself!-
polygamists!-Well, there's a lot to be said for polygamy.
Take the women out of industry, anyway.-My dear
friends, if you would just
-No, no, don't you slip out
of it. 'Ave you seen God? 'Ave you
touched 'im? 'Ave you
shook '
ands with 'im?-Oh, don't get on the argue, for
Christ's sake don't get on the
argue!" etc. etc. I listened
for twenty minutes, anxious to learn something about
Mormonism, but the meeting never got beyond shouts. It
is the general fate of street meetings.
In Middlesex Street, among the crowds at the market, a
draggled, down-at-heel woman was hauling a brat of five
by the arm. She brandished a tin trumpet in its face. The
brat was squalling.
"Enjoy yourself!" yelled the mother. "What yer think I
brought yer out 'ere for an' bought y'a trumpet an' all?
D'ya want to go across my knee? You little bastard, you
shall
enjoy yerself!"
Some drops of spittle fell from the trumpet. The mother
and the child disappeared, both bawling. It was all very
queer after Paris.
The last night that I was in the Pennyfields lodginghouse
there was a quarrel between two of the lodgers, a vile
scene. One of the old-age pensioners, a man of about
seventy, naked to the waist (he had been laundering), was
violently abusing a short, thickset stevedore, who stood
with his back to the fire. I could see the old man's face in
the light of the fire, and he was almost crying with grief
and rage. Evidently something very serious had happened.
The old-age pensioner
: "You---!"
The stevedore
: "Shut yer mouth, you ole---, afore I
set about yer!"