lodging-houses. The tea appeared to be made
with tea
dust, which I fancy had been given to the
Salvation Army in charity, though they sold it at three-
halfpence a cup. It was foul stuff. At ten o'clock an
officer marched round the hall blowing a whistle.
Immediately everyone stood up.
"What's this for?" I said to Paddy, astonished.
"Dat means you has to go off to bed. An' you has to
look sharp about it, too."
Obediently as sheep, the whole two hundred men
trooped off to bed, under the command of the officers.
The dormitory was a great attic like a barrack room, with
sixty or seventy beds in it. They were clean and tolerably
comfortable, but very narrow and very close together, so
that one breathed straight into one's neighbour's face.
Two officers slept in the room, to see that there was no
smoking and no talking after lights-out. Paddy and I had
scarcely a wink of sleep, for there was a man near us
who had some nervous trouble, shellshock perhaps,
which made him cry out "Pip!" at irregular intervals. It
was a loud, startling noise, something like the toot of a
small motor-horn. You never knew when it was coming,
and it was a sure preventer of sleep. It appeared that Pip,
as the others called him, slept regularly in the shelter,
and he must have kept ten or twenty people awake every
night. He was an example of the kind of thing that
prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men
are herded as they are in these lodging-houses.
At seven another whistle blew, and the officers went
round shaking those who did not get up at once. Since
then I have slept in a number of Salvation Army
shelters, and found that, though the different houses
vary a little, this semi-military discipline is the same in
all of them. They are certainly cheap, but they are too
like workhouses for my taste. In some of them there is
even a compulsory religious service once or twice a week,
which the lodgers must attend or leave the house. The fact
is that the Salvation Army are so in the habit of thinking
themselves a charitable body that they cannot even run a
lodging-house without making it stink of charity.
At ten I went to B.'s office and asked him to lend me a
pound. He gave me two pounds and told me to come again
when necessary, so that Paddy and I were free of money
troubles for a week at least. We loitered the day in
Trafalgar Square, looking for a friend of Paddy's who
never turned up, and at night went to a lodginghouse in a
back alley near the Strand. The charge was elevenpence,
but it was a dark, evil-smelling place, and a notorious
haunt of the "nancy boys." Downstairs, in the murky
kitchen, three ambiguous-looking youths in smartish blue
suits were sitting on a bench apart, ignored by the other
lodgers. I suppose they were "nancy boys." They looked
the same type as the apache boys one sees in Paris, except
that they wore no sidewhiskers. In front of the fire a fully
dressed man and a stark-naked man were bargaining. They
were newspaper sellers. The dressed man was selling his
clothes to the naked man. He said:
"'Ere y'are, the best rig-out you ever 'ad. A tosheroon
[half a crown] for the coat, two 'ogs for the trousers, one
and a tanner for the boots, and a 'og for the cap and scarf.
That's seven bob."
"You got a 'ope! I'll give yer one and a tanner for the
coat, a 'og for the trousers, and two 'ogs for the rest.
That's four and a tanner."
"Take the 'ole lot for five and a tanner, chum."
"Right y'are, off with 'em. I got to get out to sell my late
edition."
The clothed man stripped, and in three minutes their
positions were reversed; the naked man dressed, and the
other kilted with a sheet of the Daily Mail.
The dormitory was dark and close, with fifteen beds in
it. There was a horrible hot reek of urine, so beastly that at
first one tried to breathe in small, shallow puffs, not filling
one's lungs to the bottom. As I lay down in bed a man
loomed out of the darkness, leant over me and began
babbling in an educated, half-drunken voice:
"An old public school boy, what? [He had heard me
say something to Paddy.] Don't meet many of the old
school here. I am an old Etonian. You know-twenty years
hence this weather and all that." He began to quaver out
the Eton boating-song, not untunefully:
"Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest---"
"Stop that----
noise!" shouted several lodgers.
"Low types," said the old Etonian, "very low types. Funny
sort of place for you and me, eh? Do you know what my
friends say to me? They say, 'M-, you are past
redemption.' Quite true, I am past redemption.
I've come down in the world; not like these-----
s here,
who couldn't come down if they tried. We chaps who
have come down ought to hang together a bit. Youth will
be still in our faces-you know. May I offer you a drink?"
He produced a bottle of cherry brandy, and at the same
moment lost his balance and fell heavily across my legs.
Paddy, who was undressing, pulled him upright.
"Get back to yer bed, you silly ole-----
!"
The old Etonian walked unsteadily to his bed and
crawled under the sheets with all his clothes on, even his
boots. Several times in the night I heard him murmuring,
"M-, you are past redemption," as though the phrase
appealed to him. In the morning he was
lying asleep fully dressed, with the bottle clasped in his
arms. He was a man of about fifty, with a refined, worn
face, and, curiously enough, quite fashionably dressed. It
was queer to see his good patent-leather shoes sticking out
of that filthy bed. It occurred to me, too, that the cherry
brandy must have cost the equivalent of a fortnight's
lodging, so he could not have been seriously hard up.