Part 7

One morning I came upon an odd “care-taker” in a pretty house near Kensington Gardens. It was a “he” this time,--a placid, cunning, bent little old man with the air of the respectable retired butler about him. He was of a curious disposition,--garrulous, yet reticent;--he would begin to talk about the former owner of the house, and then would pull himself up short as though afraid of betraying confidence. The rooms were very handsomely decorated,--but it seemed that the owner had given it up abruptly after only three years’ tenancy.

“It looked beautiful,” said the grey-haired cicerone with a smothered sigh--“when it was all furnished. There was the Venus of Mydeses (Medicis) in the boudoir, and there was statues and busts all about, and oak-framed pictures in the dining-room,--yes! it was really quite _bee_-autiful when he had it all done up--”

Here he broke off and dusted the banisters.

“Why did he leave it after spending so much money upon it?” I asked.

The respectable old gentleman looked at me shrewdly.

“Ah!” he responded with a curious expression in his filmy eyes--“Why indeed!”

This was baffling, and he seemed to think it so, for by way of relenting, he confided to me the information (a well-worn ruse) that there had already been several people after the house, and that I had better see about it at once if I wished to secure it. I took the information very unconcernedly.

“Oh, I am not at all keen about it,” I said--“I have seen a house in Gladys Gardens I like rather better.”

He started as if I had given him a shock.

“Gladys Gardens!” he exclaimed--“Lord love you! Why, Gladys Gardens is going down every year! It’s gone down since my time--I used to live there--I was there when the murder was committed!”

This was rather an unpleasant light to throw on Gladys Gardens, and its desirability seemed at once on the wane.

“What murder?” I asked.

“Oh, well, it was some time ago,” he said, now appearing benevolently anxious not to cause me unnecessary alarm--“But it was a shocking murder!--and Gladys Gardens has gone down ever since. You’d much better live here than there!”

With which parting recommendation he bowed me out urbanely, having done his utmost best, at all risks, for his employer’s advantage.

Of the number of babies born in “desirable mansions” and “Noble Residences” it would be hopeless to attempt any calculation. The comfortable quarters enjoyed by “care-takers,” coupled with good pay, make them, as a rule, unwilling to move when once installed, and reluctant to praise the qualities of the house they inhabit, lest they should be forced to vacate for an actual paying tenant. So that if they are very cosy, and have made a family home and birthplace of some warm and roomy basement in De Vere Gardens or Kensington Gate or other fashionable neighbourhoods, and you want to take the house that serves them so well as lodging, you may be sure you will hear something doubtful about the drainage, the water, or the waste-pipes, or the “closeness” or the “darkness,”--something to scare you off, in fact, and enable them to stay where they are in peace, and leave you out in the cold. This plan of action is so obviously natural, that it is very strange lessees of houses do not perceive it. Many houses in London have been occupied by “care-takers” for three or four years, never seeming to have any chance of letting--and considering what a loss of money this means to the actual owners, surely the question of “care-taking” deserves some consideration. Of course, the fabulous rents asked for mere boxes and barns of accommodation in good centres is one great reason for the non-letting of houses, as also the prevailing preference for “flats,”--but the “care-takers” have their share in the obstruction, and so have the house-agents. So, also, has the system of demanding “premiums”--a system which is positively nefarious. Recently a friend of mine was asked two thousand guineas premium for a house whose rental was £180 per annum. He was a big, broad-shouldered American, and took matters coolly.

“What do you want a premium for?” he demanded.

“For the improvements--the position,--the last owner spent a great deal on the place.”

“He did, did he? Well, where’s he gone to now?”

“He has bought a place in the country.”

“Oh! Well, you just ask him if he was thinking about me when he fixed up those ‘improvements’? If he was, I’ll give him a hundred dollars! But if he was planning out all those things for himself and his own comfort, and now wants _me_ to pay for what _he_ got the newest and best of, he’s just as mean a cuss as ever hung between this world and the next!”

This was a sort of logic not accepted by house-agents,--and the consequence of his refusal to pay the premium demanded lost him the “desirable residence” he had been inclined to take. But it is still unlet, and seems likely to remain so. It may here be remarked that house-agents themselves generally _suggest_ the asking of premiums. And why? Because they get their own percentage out of it. In the business of house-letting, as in other trades and professions, things would go on much better without the “middle-man.” If owners of houses could and would come into direct communication with intending tenants, they would find matters much more satisfactory in every respect, but no doubt it will take some time, and a good deal of bitter experience as well, to persuade them of the fact. And meantime, excellent houses remain empty for years, given over to dirt and neglect and “care-takers” who do not pay for the roof that shelters them, and who take no sort of interest in their employer’s loss or gain.

One of the strangest “care-takers” I ever came across was a small old boy with a wizened pale face,--and spectacles. Out of sheer curiosity I asked him how old he was--he said fourteen, and I was bound to believe him. But he looked more like seventy, and badly worn at that. He had the most precocious knowledge of domestic arrangements,--he knew all about gas-stoves and “kitcheners,”--and, what was rather remarkable, he had an æsthetic taste in colours. He showed me over a newly-decorated house, not far off Cadogan Square, and observed that it would probably have to be re-done for “any person of taste who was still young enough to care!”

“The colouring in the drawing-room,” said the small old boy, with an inimitable air of fastidious repugnance, “is quite trying to the nerves.”

I looked in, and found it really was so--garish and gaudy to an extreme--and I asked him playfully how he managed to stand it.

“I am accustomed to it,” said the small old boy wearily, taking off his spectacles, wiping them, and putting them on again--“that is, in a way, you know. One never does get out-and-out hardened to it. This--” and he threw open a door--“is the dining-room. It should have had an oak dado!”

“Of course!” I said, delighted with the small old boy’s feeling for art. He seemed cheered by my encouragement and proceeded:

“An oak dado and overmantel to match. The tint of the ceiling would then have to be modified. As it is at present no person of taste would stand it--not as a permanency.”

“How long have you been here?” I inquired.

“I shall have occupied this position some three months to-morrow,” said the small old boy with a certain stateliness of manner--“But I think of resigning it shortly to my mother. I’m rather tired of it myself, though it has served me well for reading purposes.”

“For reading purposes!” I looked at him wonderingly,--he was so meagre and wan and worn and ancient of aspect.

“You see,” he went on placidly--“you want quiet when you are studying for anything. And it’s very quiet here. As they say in _Hamlet_, ‘not a mouse stirring.’”

“Ah! you read Shakespeare then?”

“I learn the various parts in the principal plays,” he replied with dignity--“I am going to be an actor.”

“Indeed!” I did my best not to laugh,--the small old boy was so earnest and solemn.

“I have calculated,” he said, “that in from eight to ten years Henry Irving will be, as they say, on his last legs. I shall be twenty-four, and shall have played any small parts I can get in the provinces till then. I shall save all the money I can, and live as the Greek philosophers lived, on simple food,--and when I am about thirty-two I shall take the Lyceum or Her Majesty’s. That is my plan.”

“A very ambitious one!” I observed--“Plans are not always realized, you know!”

The small old boy smiled a superior smile.

“Not unless one is _determined_ to realize them,” he said with singular emphasis--“Then things arrange themselves somehow. I am quite certain of my game!”

And he escorted me to the door.

“You think you’ll take this house?” he asked.

“N-n-no! I fancy not.”

“You are right!” said the small old boy approvingly--“It’s only a patched-up concern--just made to look new for the present. In six months all the gloss will be off, and it will appear as just what it is--a badly-built barrack. Good-morning!”

“Good-morning!”

The door closed. I waited a minute, then peered curiously in through the window, and dimly perceived the small old boy seated in solitary state on a kitchen chair in the bleak empty dining-room, patiently studying a book that rested on his knee. I moved away reluctantly at last and with a veritable sensation of awe, feeling that, whatever annoyances I had been subjected to in the way of “care-takers,” I had been repaid at last by my interview with this particular example of the species! For if ambition, perseverance, study, self-reliance and determination count for anything in this world--(and they do go a long way in the furtherance of one’s desires) then I had seen a future “star” of the histrionic firmament. We all know how fond actors are of telling us in after-dinner speeches how they arrived in London ready to take the world by storm with only sixpence in their pockets,--in fact this dramatic sixpence has become quite proverbial, and many a deep-mouthed ranter has alluded to the possession of that humble coin as the grand foundation of all his after career.

“Ladies and gentlemen,”--he will remark in his mellow-throated way--“When I first started in life with only sixpence in my pocket--” and so on. This is the generally accepted and acceptable opening of a truly “telling” mummer’s speech, after a watch or a piece of plate has been presented to him by his admirers.

Now, if I should live another ten years, and at the end of that time, a celebrated actor dear to the fashionable public should make his after-dinner observations thus: “Ladies and gentlemen,--When I first started in life as a ‘care-taker’--” I shall know it is the small old boy, and that I, by happy chance, was privileged to behold in that menial, though rent-and-tax-free position, the successor to the fame of Henry Irving!

JOE’S ORCHID

IT took a little time to grow, Joe! The sprouting of its leaves was slow, We know; But now its shining buds unfold, Bright as the glittering Transvaal gold;-- ’Tis worthy of a special “show,” Joe!

’Twas pestered by an insect foe, Joe! The horrid creature wouldn’t go Below;-- The native, gnawing, noxious Boer Clung to its very root and core, And tried your little temper so! Joe!

But now admiring thanks we owe Joe! To you who forced the flower to blow, Although The trail of human blood and pain Has left upon its leaves a stain;-- But that you cannot help, we know, Joe!

Gorgeous the golden blossoms glow, Joe! Can England such a plant forego? Why, no! Your skill in Orchid cultivation Has given us a conquered nation;-- But,--make you Premier? Oh, go slow, Joe!

SAVAGE LONDON

THERE are more than one hundred and eighty religious Sects in England;--and all of them have Representatives in London. There are innumerable Charity Organization Societies,--Missions without end,--Relief Funds with Centre Offices and Branch Offices in London. There is much preaching, much lecturing, much writing;--yet, when all is said, done, and written, the grim result is the same,--namely that the squalor, filth, vice, ignorance, recklessness, wretchedness, and brutality of the great Majority of the Poor in our wealthy English metropolis is a crying scandal, and “a rank offence that smells to heaven.” The religious sects meet often and discuss much,--beginning their discussions generally with a bombastical flow of oratory, and ending in a violent wrangle over some knotty point of doctrine, while the miserable creatures who cry to them for relief, cry in vain to ears that are deafened by selfishness and plugged up with conceit. A great deal too much of the money subscribed to charitable Societies goes to pay secretaries and underlings, and many and many a starving wretch has been turned ruthlessly away unaided from the doors of a stately building, flagrantly announcing itself as a “Refuge for the Destitute.” Yet nowhere are there such large sums subscribed to Foreign Missions as in London;--the Kaffir, the Zulu, the “Heathen Chinee,”--all these may appeal to London and be sure of a favourable answer. Dukes and Earls who love to see their names blazoned on lists of charitable donations would appear, from what is said about them in print, to take a deep interest in the whole world, except that particular portion of the globe from which they derive their own magnificent revenues,--and thousands of pounds are spent annually in reforming and civilizing the savage tribes of the desert and forest. Yet in the face of all this philanthropy, the horrible, almost incredible miseries of the London poor daily increase, and we know for a fact that, while money is constantly subscribed for the conversion of the foreign heathen to holy Christianity, an enormous population of native heathen, far more degraded than the most uncultured desert barbarians, swarm at the very doors of the wealthy would-be benefactors of humanity, and demand redress for their bitter and long-standing wrongs. It is a sorrow and scandal to us that it should be so; but so it is.

The neglect of years, and the rapid turn of the wheel of modern progress, has produced the London Savage,--a being more wild, more reckless and terrible than the most bloodthirsty Zulu that ever revelled in human gore. He may be met anywhere;--he lurks in dens behind some of the stateliest mansions of Kensington and Belgravia. Rolling in filthy straw, in company with several other savages like himself, who, with their wives and children, all lie together in one damp, dark, foul-smelling room, he lays his plans of robbery and murder with the same equanimity and self-applause as a fashionable preacher pens his sermon for the coming Sunday. He knows no difference between virtue and vice,--morality or the reverse. His reasoning is simple,--in fact, quite primitive;--if someone else happens to have what he wants and does not possess, such as a gold watch, for instance, or a purse of money, he considers himself justified in taking it, if not by persuasion, then by force. If he commits murder, he is perhaps caught and sentenced to be hung. Does he care? Has he any remorse? Any dread of death? Not he! He goes to the gallows with entire fortitude and dies like an ill-used martyr. His children remember him as such, and follow his example in due time, so that the hangman is still a necessary official.

One of the cruellest answers given to the pamphlet known as “The Bitter Cry of Outcast London,” was that “London must wait.”--On the very top of this a letter was published in _The Times_ from a Missionary, who begged for contributions towards providing suitable homes for English working-men in Paris. It is most probable that the Dukes and Earls and Marquises of this land came readily forward in response to the appeal, leaving the London Savage in his old quarters, the centres of typhoid, cholera and small-pox, without more than a reiteration of what had already been said--“London must wait.” And still Savage London does wait--in a peculiar way of its own. It is as much as one’s life is worth to walk on the Thames Embankment after dark,--people are knocked down or mysteriously made away with on Hampstead Heath, Wandsworth Common, and other lonely, outlying places, and the very policemen, whose anxious vigilance and active _surveillance_ cannot be too highly estimated, are in such danger of their lives that they often need fire-arms in order to protect themselves during the exercise of their duty. Moreover, the London Savage has recently been making himself familiar with dynamite. Naturally, he approves of it, and chuckles over the admirable rapidity of its action in destroying life. He tries it in order to be quite certain of its effect. He has been known to place some on a railway line, just as a train is about to pass, just by way of experiment. The female London Savage has also found out a suitable pastime for herself in vitriol throwing,--a pastime the idea of which she has borrowed from her sister the Paris “Pétroleuse.” How delightful to scarify, blister, and burn into utter hideousness the face of some man or woman who has become repulsive to her! It is a task which entirely satisfies her feminine instincts. Some grave clergyman will perhaps take her very seriously to task for having smothered her baby under a mattress. She will not see the force of his reasoning in the least. She will state rough facts in the face of his fancy arguments. She will tell him there was no room for the baby in a den measuring seven feet by ten, where fifteen people huddle together,--she will also prove that there was no food for the baby, and no clothes either. It would have died anyhow. So she goes cheerfully to prison for having smothered her child, and as she goes, she administers a few consolatory oaths to her brute companions, who congratulate her on her good fortune. Good fortune? Certainly. She goes to prison, and prison means shelter and wholesome food at regular hours every day. For the English Government takes the tenderest care of its criminals. They are visited by the ministers of the Church, who bless them solemnly and commend their fragments of black souls to the care of Heaven; and lady missionaries sit with them for an hour at a time, and give them good books and pretty little tracts to read. But for the miserable beings, who, in the midst of their misery, still feebly try to cling to honesty, there is no help--no hope. And so the evil grows and widens, like the ever moving ball of snow which gradually becomes an avalanche. The blood yet runs cold to read of the horrors of the French Revolution of 1789,--of the unbridled ferocity of the Paris mob, to whom the crushing of human life was no more than the killing of mosquitoes. The graphic picture of the whole frightful scene drawn by Thomas Carlyle is not so much a history as a warning. The English temperament is much colder, more stolid and patient than that of the French,--but at the same time it is more deliberately cruel and brutal when once awakened to a sense of injustice, and smarting under inexplicable wrong. The London Savages, once let loose, would be more dangerous to deal with than even those Savages of Paris were. And who can tell how long London _will_ wait? How long will its ferocious patience, the patience of a tiger waiting for its prey, continue to hold out? One thing might certainly be done in the meantime, and that is, to draw in all the money that is pouring out of the great English capital to the relief of foreigners, and let it flow into the proper channels. Charity begins at home. It is a mockery of wealth to use it for the benefit of strange nations who, as soon as not, will turn and rend us, while neglecting our own people. The immense river of golden coin which rushes abundantly out of England on the least appeal to its generosity, should be turned in the right direction,--homeward. Let it flow down the city slums,--let it reach to the wretched hovels that lie within a stone’s throw of the King’s Palace of Windsor,--let it sweep away some of the accumulated mountains of misery in the homes of the poor,--and Savage London, melted to the heart, may yet learn to believe in a beneficent Creator, for whom at present it has less honour and less faith than the most abandoned heathen worshipper of wooden idols. Recognize the fact, good people!--Christian London is more than half heathen, and the sooner this terrible truth is taken to heart, the more hope there is of those who are sincerely religious and charitable hastening to the immediate rescue of their perishing kindred, the limit of whose stupefied endurance has been nearly reached, and when reached must culminate in some appalling disaster. It is a matter which at Christmas-time calls for some consideration among the numerous other claims which are set forward as worthy of remembrance by the influential and wealthy. Persons who give Two Thousand Guineas for a horse might ponder it,--and those who are rushing abroad to spend their money on the gambling tables of Monte Carlo might also take it to heart. The “Hooligan” is made of human material like ourselves; he is not a special sort of manufacture. He is the unfortunate result of long years of neglect inflicted on his class by his brothers; yet he is our blood and kin, and perhaps if we knew all about him, we should find that his faults of breeding and education are not so much his as the faults of those who leave him neglected in his lair. The King, whose earnest exertions on behalf of the “Housing of the Poor” have scarcely been done full justice to, has, perhaps, nothing more at heart than the desire to remedy the evils of overcrowding, and to alleviate the misery resulting from want of proper breathing-room and light,--and Queen Alexandra’s gentle and noble efforts in the same direction have added an extra grace to the many which adorn her life and character. But both the King and the Queen naturally expect response and assistance from the wealthier of their subjects in so great and necessary a work. Missionaries in India who spend time and money in endeavouring to “convert” Hindoos, who are often more truly religious than some of their would-be teachers, would do well to turn their efforts towards “Hooliganism,” and Jesuit priests who go about collecting funds to build more Roman Catholic Churches than are needed or wished for in a Protestant country, would build a truer and far more convincing Spiritual fabric if they would use some of their surplus cash for the rescue of such London heathens who have never heard of either Protestantism or Romanism, or indeed of any religious faith at all. To such blighted and disastrous lives in the purlieus of the great city, Christ would assuredly go first of all, if He ever came again with the Divine Christmas message of “Good-Will.”

ONE ROSE!

ONE--dropped from her breast As she passed along, Like a fluttering bird from a nest, Or the final note of a song-- One--as fragile and fair As the woman herself, I swear! With the light of a thousand sunbeams caught in the waves of her golden hair!

One--white as the snow-- It fell at her feet, When her laughter, clear and low, Replied to the fervid heat Of my love-words wild and vain, And my heart grew numb with pain As her mirthful mockery crushed my heart, and maddened my foolish brain.

Farewell to my dream! I should have known That however fair she may seem, Her heart is as cold as stone, A mirror of social vice, A sparkling nugget of ice, Valued at “so much” or more, and ready for sale at its market price!

A “society star?” Yes, that is true: She is proud; such women are; Yet perhaps she will smile on rule! Your turn will come, maybe: Who knows? perchance you will see The lying glances, the treacherous smiles she lately lavished on me.