Nights in London Part 13

_Through London rain her people flow, And Pleasure trafficks to and fro.

A gemmy splendour fills the town, And robes her in a spangled gown Through which no sorry wound may show._

_But with the dusk my fancies go To that grey street I used to know, Where Love once brought his heavy crown Through London rain!_

_And ever, when the day is low, And stealthy clouds the night forethrow, I quest these ways of dear renown, And pray, while Hope in tears I drown, That once again her face may glow, Through London rain!_

A FRENCH NIGHT

OLD COMPTON STREET

Step aside from the jostle and clamour of Oxford Street into Soho Square, and you are back in the eighteenth century and as lonely as a good man in Chicago. Cross the Square, cut through Greek Street or Dean Street, and you are in--Paris, amid the clang, the gesture, and the alert nonchalance of metropolitan France.

Soho--magic syllables! For when the respectable Londoner wants to feel devilish he goes to Soho, where every street is a song. He walks through Old Compton Street, and, instinctively, he swaggers; he is abroad; he is a dog. He comes up from Surbiton or Norwood or Golder's Green, and he dines cheaply at one of the hundred little restaurants, and returns home with the air and the sensation of one who has travelled, and has peeped into places that are not ... Quite ... you know.

Soho exists only to feed the drab suburban population of London on the spree. That artificial atmosphere of Montmartre, those little touches of a false Bohemia are all cunningly spread from the brains of the restaurateurs as a net to catch the young bank clerk and the young Fabian girl. Indeed, one establishment has overplayed the game to the extent of renaming itself "The Bohemia." The result is that one dare not go there for fear of dining amid the minor clergy and the Fabians and the girl-typists. It is a little pitiable to make a tour of the cafes and watch the Londoner trying to be Bohemian. There has been, of course, for the last few years, a growing disregard, among all cla.s.ses, for the heavier conventionalities; but this determined Bohemianism is a mistake.

The Englishman can no more be trifling and light-hearted in the Gallic manner than a Polar bear can dance the _maxixe bresilienne_ in the jungle. If you have ever visited those melancholy places, the night clubs and cabarets, which had a boom a year or two ago, you will appreciate the immense effort that devilry demands from him. Those places were the last word in dullness. I have been at Hampstead tea-parties which gave you a little more of the joy of living. I have watched the nuts and the girls, and what have I seen? Boredom. Heavy eyes, nodding heads, a worn-out face, saying with determination, "I WILL be gay!" Perhaps you have seen the pictures of those luxuriously upholstered and appointed establishments: music, gaiety, sparkle, fine dresses, costume songs, tangos, smart conversation and faces, and all the rest of it. But the real thing.... Imagine a lot of dishevelled girls pouring into a stuffy room after the theatre, looking already fatigued, but bracing themselves to dance and eat and drink and talk until--as I have seen them--they fall asleep over the tables, and hate the boy who brought them there.

Practically the sole purpose of the place was to fill some one's pockets, for, as the patrons were playing at being frightful dogs, the management knew that they could do as they liked with the tariff. The boys wouldn't go to night-clubs if they were not spendthrifts. Result: whisky-and-soda, seven-and-sixpence; cup of coffee, half a crown. And n.o.body ever had the pluck to ask for change out of a sovereign.

Now, I love my c.o.c.kneys, heart and soul. And, just because I love them so much, I do wish to goodness they wouldn't be Bohemian; I do wish to goodness they would keep out of Soho cafes. They only come in quest of a Bohemianism which isn't there. They can get much better food at home, or they can afford to get a really good meal at an English hotel. I wish they would leave Soho alone for the people like myself who feed there because it is cheap, and because the waiters will give us credit.

"Garcong," cried the diner whose food was underdone, "these sausages ne sont pas fait!"

If the c.o.c.kney goes on like this, he will spoil Soho, and he will lose his own delightful individuality and idiosyncrasy.

But, apart from the invasion of Soho by the girl-clerk and the book-keeper, one cannot but love it. I love it because, in my early days of scant feeding, it was the one spot in London where I could gorge to repletion for a s.h.i.+lling. There was a little place in Wardour Street, the Franco-Suisse--it is still there--whose s.h.i.+lling table d'hote was a marvel: And I always had my bob's worth, I can a.s.sure you; for those were the days when one went hungry all day in order to buy concert tickets. Indeed, there were occasions when the breadbasket was removed from my table, so savage was the raid I made upon it.

There, one night a week, we feasted gloriously. We revelled. We read the _Gaulois_ and _Gil Blas_ and papers of a friskier tone. There still exists a Servian cafe where all manner of inflammatory organs of Nihilism may be read, and where heavy-bearded men--Anarchists, you hope, but piano-builders, you fear--would sit for three hours over their dinner Talking, _Talking_, TALKING. Then for another hour they would play backgammon, and at last roll out, blasphemously, to the darkened street, and so Home to those mysterious lodgings about Broad Street and Pulteney Street.

How the kitchens manage to do those s.h.i.+lling table d'hotes is a mystery which I have never solved, though I have visited "below" on one or two occasions and talked with the chefs. There are about a dozen cafes now which, for the Homeric s.h.i.+lling, give you four courses, bread _ad lib_, and coffee to follow. And it is good; it is a refection for the G.o.ds--certain selected G.o.ds.

You stroll into the little gaslit room (enamelled in white and decorated with tables set in the simplest fas.h.i.+on, yet clean and sufficient) as though you are dropping in at the Savoy or Dieudonne's.

It is rhomboidal in shape, with many angles, as though perspective had suddenly gone mad. Each table is set with a spoon, a knife, a fork, a serviette, a basket of French bread, and a jar of French mustard. If you are in spendthrift mood, you may send the boy for a bottle of _vin ordinaire_, which costs tenpence; on more sober occasions you send him for beer.

There is no menu on the table; the waiter or, more usually, in these smaller places, the waitress explains things to you as you go along.

Each course carries two dishes, _au choix_. There are no _hors d'oeuvres_; you dash gaily into the soup. The tureen is brought to the table, and you have as many goes as you please. Hot water, flavoured with potato and garnished with a yard of bread, makes an excellent lining for a hollow stomach. This is followed by omelette or fish. Of the two evils you choose the less, and cry "Omelette!" When the omelette is thrown in front of you it at once makes its presence felt. It recalls Bill Nye's beautiful story about an introspective egg laid by a morbid hen. However, if you smother the omelette in salt, red pepper, and mustard, you will be able to deal with it. I fear I cannot say as much for the fish. Then follows the inevitable chicken and salad, or perhaps Vienna steak, or _vol-au-vent_. The next item is Camembert or fruit, and coffee concludes the display.

Dining in these places is not a matter of subdued murmurs, of conversation in dulcet tones, or soft strains from the band. Rather you seem to dine in a menagerie. It is a bombardment more than a meal. The air buckles and cracks with noise. The first outbreak of hostilities comes from the counter at the entry of the first guest. The moment he is seated the waitress screams, "Un potage--un!" The large Monsieur, the proprietor, at the counter, bellows down the tube, "Un POTAGE--Un!"

Away in subterranean regions an ear catches it, and a distant voice chants "_Potage_!" And then from the far reaches of the kitchen you hear a smothered tenor, as coming from the throat of one drowned in the soup-kettle, "P o t a g e!" As the customers crowd in the din increases.

Everywhere there is noise; as a result the customers must shout their conversation. As the volume of conversation increases the counter, finding itself hard-pressed, brings up its heavy artillery.

"Vol-au-vent!" sings the waitress. "_Vol-au-vent!_" chants the counter in a ba.s.s as heavy and with as wide a range as Chaliapine's.

"VOL-AU-VENT!" roars the kitchen with the despair of tears in the voice; and "V o l-a u-v e n t!" wails the lost soul beyond the Styx. By half-past seven it is no longer a restaurant; it is no longer a dinner that is being served. It is a grand opera that is in progress. The vocalists, "finding" themselves towards the end of the first act, warm up to the second, and each develops an individuality. I have often let my Vienna steak get cold while listening and trying to distinguish between the kitchen lift-man and the cook. Lift-man is usually a light and agreeable baritone, while the cook has mostly a falsetto, with a really exciting register. This grand opera idea affects, in turn, the waitresses. To the first-comers they are casual and chatty; but towards seven o'clock there is a subtle change. They become tragic. They are as the children of destiny. There is that Italianate sob in the voice as they demand _Poulet roti au salade_! as who should cry, "Ah, fors e lui!" or "In questa tomba...." They do not serve you. They a.s.sault you with soup or omelette. They make a grand pa.s.s above your head, and fling knife and fork before you. They collide with themselves and each other, and there are recriminations and reprisals. They quarrel, apparently, to the death, while M'sieu and Madame look on, pa.s.sive spectators of the eternal drama. The air boils. The blood of the diners begins to boil, too, for they wave napkins and sticks of bread, and they bellow and scream defiance at one another. They draw the attention of the waitress to the fact that there is no salt on the table; what they seem to be telling her is that the destinies of France are in the balance, the enemy is at the gates, and that she must deliver herself as hostage or suffer dreadful deaths. Everything, in fact, boils, except the soup and the coffee; and at last, glad to escape, you toss your s.h.i.+lling on the table and tumble out, followed by a yearning cry of "Une salade--une!"

Even then your entertainment has not ceased with the pa.s.sing of the s.h.i.+lling. For there are now numerous coffee-bars in Old Compton Street where for a penny you may lounge at the counter and get an excellent cup of black coffee, and listen to the electric piano, splurging its cheap gaiety on the night, or to the newsmen yelling "_Journaux de Paris_!" or "_Derniere Heure_!" There are "The Chat Noir," "The Cafe Leon," and "The Cafe Bar Conte"; also there is "The Suisse," where you may get "rekerky"

liqueurs at threepence a time, and there is a j.a.panese cafe in Edward Street.

Of course there are numbers of places in Soho where you may dine more lavishly and expensively, and where you will find a band and a careful wine-list, such as Maxim's, The Coventry, The Florence, and Kettner's.

Here you do not escape for a s.h.i.+lling, or anything like it. Maxim's does an excellent half-crown dinner, and so, too, does The Rendezvous. The others range from three s.h.i.+llings to five s.h.i.+llings; and as the price of the meal increases so do the prices on the wine-lists increase, though you drink the same wine in each establishment.

The atmosphere of the cheaper places is, however, distinctly more companionable than that of these others. In the latter you have Surbiton and Streatham, anxious to display its small stock of evening frocks and dress suits; very proper, very conscious of itself, very proud of having broken away from parental tradition. But in the smaller places, which are supported by a regular clientele of the French clerks, workmen, and warehouse porters who are employed in and about Oxford Street, the sense of camaraderie and naturalness is very strong. These people are not doing anything extraordinary. They are just having dinner, and they are gay and _insouciant_ about it, as they are about everything except frivolity. It is not exciting for them to dine on five courses instead of on roast mutton and vegetables and milk-pudding. It is a common-place. For that is the curious thing about the foreigner: wherever he wanders he takes his country with him. Englishmen get into queer corners of the world, and adapt themselves to local customs, fit themselves into local landscapes. Not so the Continental. Let him go to London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and he will take France, or Germany, or Italy, or Russia with him. Here in this little square mile of London is France: French shops, French comestibles, French papers, French books, French pictures, French hardware, and French restaurants and manners. In old Compton Street he is as much in France as if he were in the rue Chaussee d'Antin. I met some time since a grey little Frenchman who is first fiddle at a hall near Piccadilly Circus. He has never been out of France. Years and years ago he came from Paris, and went to friends in Wardour Street. There he worked for some time in a French music warehouse; and, when that failed, he was taken on in a small theatre near Shaftesbury Avenue. Thence, at fifty-two, he drifted into this music-hall orchestra, of which he is now leader. Yet during the whole time he has been with us he has never visited London. His London life has been limited to that square mile of short, brisk streets, Soho. If he crossed Piccadilly Circus, he would be lost, poor dear!

"Ah!" he sighs. "France ... yes ... Paris. Yes." For he lives only in dreams of the real Paris. He hopes soon to return there. He hoped soon to return there thirty years ago. He hates his work. He does not want to play the music of London, but the music of Paris. If he must play in London, he would choose to play in Covent Garden orchestra, where his fancy would have full freedom. When he says Music, he means Ma.s.senet, Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo. He plays Wagner with but little interest. He plays Viennese opera with a positive snort. Ragtime--well, I do not think he is conscious of playing it; he fiddles mechanically for that. But when, by a rare chance, the bill contains an excerpt from Pagliacci, La Boheme, or b.u.t.terfly, then he lives. He cares nothing for the twilight muse of your intellectual moderns--Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Scriabine, and such. For him music is melody, melody, melody--laughter, quick tears, and the graceful surface of things; movement and festal colour.

He seldom rises before noon--unless rehearsals compel--and then, after a coffee, he wanders forth, smoking the cigarette of Algeria, and humming, always humming, the music that is being hummed in Paris. He is picturesque, in his own way--shabby, but artistically shabby. At one o'clock you will see him in "The Dieppe," taking their s.h.i.+lling table d'hote _dejeuner_, with a half-bottle of _vin ordinaire_; and he will sit over the coffee perhaps until three o'clock, murmuring the luscious, facile phrases of Ma.s.senet.

His great friend is the Irishman who plays the drum, for they have this in common: they are both exiles. They are both "saving up" to return home. They have both been "saving up" for the last twenty years. In each case there is a girl.... Or there was a girl twenty years ago. She is waiting for them--one in Paris, and the other in Wicklow. At least, so they believe. Sometimes, though, I think they must doubt; for I have met them together in the Hotel Suisse putting absinthes away carelessly, hopelessly; and a man does not play with absinthe when a girl is waiting for him.

AN ITALIAN NIGHT

CLERKENWELL

_CLERKENWELL_

_Deep in the town of window smiles-- You shall not find it, though you seek; But over many bricky miles It draws me through the wearing week.

Its panes are dim, its curtains grey, It shows no heartsome s.h.i.+ne at dusk; For gas is dear, and factory pay Makes small display: On the small wage she earns she dare not be too gay!_

_A loud saloon flings golden light Athwart the wet and greasy way, Where, every happy Sunday night, We meet in mood of holiday.

She wears a dress of claret glow That's thinly frothed with bead and lace.

She buys this lace in Jasmine Row, A spot, you know, Where luxuries of lace for a mere nothing go._

_I love the shops that flare and lurk In the big street whose lamps are gems, For there she stops when off to work To covet silks and diadems.

At evenings, too, the organ plays "My Hero" or in "Dixie Land"; And in the odoured purple haze, Where naphthas blaze, The grubby little girls the dust of dancing raise._

AN ITALIAN NIGHT

CLERKENWELL

For some obscure reason Saffron Hill is always a.s.sociated in the public mind with Little Italy. Why, I do not know. It isn't and never was Italian. There is not a trace of anything the least Italian about it.

There isn't a shop or a home in the whole length of it. It is just a segment of the City, E.C.--a straggling street of flat-faced warehouses and printing-works; high, impa.s.sive walls; gaunt, sombre, and dumb; not one sound or spark of life to be heard or seen anywhere. Yet that is what the unknowing think of when they think of the Italian quarter.

The true, warm heart of Italy in London is Eyre Street Hill, which slips shyly out of one of the romantic streets of London--Clerkenwell Road.

There is something very taking about Clerkenwell Road, something snug and cheering. It is full, cl.u.s.tering, and alive. Here is the Italian Church. Here is St. John's Gate, where Goldsmith and Isaac Walton and a host of other delightful fellows lived. This gatehouse is now all that remains of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem around which the little village of Clerkenwell developed. Very near, too, are Cloth Fair, Bartholomew's Close, Smithfield, and a hundred other echoes of past times. And here--most exciting of all--the redoubtable Mr. Heinz (famous for his 57 Varieties) has his warehouse.

There is a waywardness about Clerkenwell Road. It never seems quite to know where it shall go. It drifts, winds, rises, drops, debouches. You climb its length, and, at the top, you see a wide open s.p.a.ce, which is Mount Pleasant, and you think you have reached its end; but you haven't. There is much more to come. It doesn't stop until it reaches Gray's Inn Road, and then it stops sharply, unexpectedly. But the romance of the place lies not only in its past; there is an immediate romance, for which you must turn into its byways. Here live all those bronzed street-merchants who carry delightful things to our doors--ice-cream, roast chestnuts, roast potatoes, chopped wood, and salt. In unsuspected warehouses here you may purchase wonderful toys that you never saw in any other shops. You may buy a barrow and a stove and a complete apparatus for roasting potatoes and chestnuts, including a natty little poker for raking out the cinders. You may buy a gaudily decorated barrow and freezing-plant for the manufacture and sale of ice-cream. Or--and as soon as I have the money this is what I am going to buy in Clerkenwell--you may buy a real street organ--a hundred of them, if you wish. While the main road and the side streets on the south are given up to the watch and clock-makers, the opposite side-streets are Italian soil. Here are large warehouses where the poor Italian may hire an organ for the day, or week, or month. A rehearsal at one of these show-rooms is a deafening affair; it is just like Naples on a Sunday morning. As the organs come over from Italy, they are "tried out," and any flaws are immediately detected by the expert ear. In the same way, a prospective hirer always tries his instrument before concluding the deal, running through the tunes to be sure that they are fairly up-to-date. When you get, say, six clients all rehearsing their organs at once in a small show-room....