Part 9
Besides her evenings, the girl had the four bank-holidays, and the holidays of Christmas and Easter. Nobody in London does any work between Thursday in Passion Week and Easter Tuesday, nor does any one work much between Christmas eve, when that falls on Thursday or Friday, and the following Tuesday.
These days and seasons are not only holidays, they are days reserved for weddings and christenings. It is necessary, of course, that a girl who respects herself should make a creditable appearance at such a time. She must therefore save, and save with zeal. Saving up for bank-holiday becomes a passion. Dinner is reduced to the lowest possible dimensions, even to a halfpenny lump of currant pudding, which is as heavy as lead and the most satisfying thing for the money that can be procured.
Bank-holiday demands a complete change of clothes, from the hat to the boots. Everything must be new. There must not be an old frock with a new hat, nor an old pair of boots with a new frock. This means a great deal of saving. It must also be accompanied by a general cleaning up of the windows, the door-steps, the stairs, the rooms. All over London Street before bank-holiday there is unusual movement. Chairs are brought out, and girls stand upon them to clean the ground-floor windows.
I have already spoken of the change that has come over this quarter. Formerly a holiday was celebrated after the manner of the ancient Danes, by long and barbaric drinking bouts. Early in the morning girls would be seen lying helpless on the pavement. Lads ran about carrying bottles of gin, which they offered to every one. These are customs of the past, though complete soberness is not yet quite achieved.
Still, however, the Ratcliffe girl likes to keep her bank-holiday at home among her own people, in her beloved Brook Street. She cheerfully saves up all she can, so that there may be a good sum for bank-holiday, enough for new clothes and something over, something to treat her friends with. And when the day is over she must go back to her work with an empty purse. Well for her if it is not also with an aching head.
When Liz was approaching the age of seventeen she had learned, from every point of view, all that she would ever learn; she had risen as high as she could rise in the factory; she made as good wages as she would ever make; she lived at home, sharing a room with two sisters; she paid her mother sixpence a week for bed and lodging; her character was formed; her acquaintance with good and evil was deep, wide, and intimate; she was steady, as girls of her class go, thanks to those ladies; if she ever drank too much she was ashamed of herself, and as yet she had no sweetheart. She was affectionate and responded to kindness, but she was self-willed, and would bear no thwarting. She was deficient on the side of imagination. She could not enter into the thoughts or the position of any one except herself; that was the natural result of her narrow, groove-like life. She had rules of conduct and of behavior; of religion she had little, if any, discoverable. She never went to church or chapel. She was fond of every kind of excitement, yet the emotional side of religion touched her not. The Irish girls, of whom there are many at Ratcliffe, were Catholics, and sometimes went to church. Once Liz went there, too, and seemed to like the music and the lights, but she did not repeat her visit.
This was her life all through the week. On Sunday, however, she made a difference.
On that morning she lay in bed till ten or eleven. She spent the time before dinner over her wardrobe; at one o’clock she sat down with the family to the most important ceremony of the week, the Sunday dinner. To other people besides the working-folk of Ratcliffe the Sunday dinner is an institution. Pope’s retired citizen, on Sundays, had, we know, two puddings to smoke upon the board. To all people of the middle class the Sunday dinner is the occasion for a little indulgence, for a glass of wine after dinner. To the resident in Ratcliffe it means a big feed, as much as a man can eat, and that of a popular and favorite dish. There are many dishes dear to the heart of the working-man. He loves everything that is confected with, or accompanied by, things of strong taste. If he knew of the delicacy called lobscouse he would have it nearly every Sunday; if he knew of that other delicacy called potato-pot he would order it frequently. As it is, he relies for the most part upon some portion of pig—that creature of “fine miscellaneous feeding.” He loves roast pork, boiled pork, fried pork, baked pork, but especially he loves pig’s head. His wife buys this portion of the animal, stuffs the ears and eyes thereof with sage and onions,—a great deal of sage and much onion,—and sends it to the bakehouse. Pig’s head thus treated and done to a turn is said to have no fellow. It is accompanied by beer, and beer in plenty. The family sit down to this meal when it is brought in from the baker, and continue eating until they can eat no longer. So, in Arabian deserts, if you would win the hearts of the Bedouin you give them a sheep, and they will eat until they can eat no longer. It is part of the Sunday dinner that there is to be no hint or suspicion of any limit, except that imposed by nature. They eat till they can eat no more.
When she was seventeen Liz found a sweetheart.
He was a young fellow of twenty or thereabouts. He had come out of his native village, some place in the quiet country, a dull place, to enjoy the life of London. He was a highly skilled agricultural laborer; there was nothing on the farm that he could not do. He knew the fields and the woods, the wild creatures and the birds; he knew how to plow and to reap; he could keep an allotment full of vegetables all the year round; he understood a stable and a dairy, a paddock and sheepfold. Yet with all this knowledge he came to London, where it was of no earthly use to him. He threw over the best work that a country lad can have, and he became nothing but a pair of hands like this girl’s father. He was a pair of hands; he was a strong back; his sturdy legs were fit to do the commonest, the heaviest, the most weary work in the world. One evening Liz was standing alone on the pavement, looking at something or other—a barrel-organ, a cheap Jack, one of the common sights and sounds—when this young fellow passed along, walking heavily, as one who has walked chiefly over plowed fields. He looked at her. Something in her face,—it was an honest face,—something in her attitude of alertness and the sharp look of her eye struck his imagination. He hitched closer. In Brook Street it is permissible, it is laudable, to introduce yourself. He said huskily: “I’ve seen you here before. What’s your name? Mine is George.”
That was the beginning of it. Presently the other girls met Liz walking proudly along Brook Street with a big, well-set-up young fellow. They moved out of her way. Liz had got a chap. When would their turn come?
Next night they met again. On Sunday she walked with him along the Mile End Road without her apron and in her best hat. It was a parade and proclamation of an engagement. She told her mother, who was glad. “A man,” she said, “is a better friend than a woman. He sticks.” Liz did not tell the ladies of the club, but the other girls did, and the ladies looked grave and spoke seriously to her about responsibilities.
George did stick to her. He was an honest lad; he had chosen his sweetheart, and he stuck to her. When he had money he gave her treats. He took her by train to Epping Forest, to North Woolwich Gardens, to the theater, to the music-hall. In his way he loved the girl. She would not leave the club, but she gave him part of every evening. He talked to her about the country life he had left behind him. He told her the stories about poachers which belong to every village ale-house. It pleased him to recall the past he had thrown away. All day long he carried heavy bales and boxes and burdens backward and forward. It was monotonous work, cheered only by the striking of the hours and the thought of the coming evening. The poor lad’s day was hallowed by his evening walk.
Six months later Liz was married. It was on the August bank-holiday. The wedding took place at St. James’s Church, Ratcliffe. It was celebrated in a style which did honor to the quarter. The bride was dressed in heliotrope satin. She wore a large hat of purple plush. The bridesmaids were brilliantly attired in frocks of velveteen, green and crimson and blue. They too wore hats of plush. After the ceremony they adjourned to the residence of the bride, where a great feast was spread. The rejoicing lasted all day and all night. When the young couple began their wedded life it was with an empty purse and a week of borrowed food. I hope that George will not get drunk, will not knock his wife down, and will not take the strap to her. If he does, we must comfort ourselves with the thought that to Liz it will be no new thing, hitherto unknown in the land, not an unnatural thing when the drink is in a man, and, unless repeated in soberness, a trifle to be endured and forgotten and forgiven, even seventy times seven.
Here we must leave our girl. She is now a wife. For a little while she will go on at the factory; then she will stay at home. London Street will be enriched by half a dozen children all her own. Like their mother, these children will play in the dust and the mud; like her, they will go to school and be happy; like her, they will go to work in the factory. Liz will be repeated in her children. As long as she lives she will know and enjoy the same life, with the same pleasures, the same anxieties, the same luck. She will “do” for her girls when they grow up. Now and then she will be taken on as a casual at the old factory. London Street will always be her whole world; she will have no interests outside, and when she dies it will be only the vanishing of one out of the multitudes which seem, as I said at the beginning, to be all alike, all living the same life, all enduring, hoping, loving, suffering, sinning, giving, helping, condoling, mourning, in the same kindly, cruel, beneficent, merciless, contradictory, womanly fashion that makes up the life of London Street.
VI
THE KEY OF THE STREET
VI
THE KEY OF THE STREET
DURING our walk along the riverside we passed here and there small groups of men, either two and three together or in companies of ten or a dozen. They were “hanging around,” hands in pockets, an empty pipe between their lips, with a slouching, apathetic air; in every case a public house was within very easy reach; in most cases the public house afforded them door-posts and walls against which to lean. They were observed in large numbers around the dock-gates and in long lines leaning against the dock-walls. There was no alertness or activity in the look or the carriage of any of these men; on the other hand, there was no dejection or unhappiness. Had we stopped to ask any of them what they were doing they would have assumed for the moment an imitation of readiness indicated by a slight stiffening of the knee-joints, the withdrawal of the hands from the pocket, and the attitude of attention by which they gave the inquirer to understand that they were waiting for a job.
This is their trade—waiting for a job; it appears to be a trade which takes the spirit out of a man, which makes him limp, which makes him unwilling to undertake that job when it arrives, which tempts him to look for any other way of getting food than the execution of that job, which narrows his views of life so that the haven where he would be is nothing but the bar of the public house, and the only joy he desires is the joy of endeavoring to alleviate a thirst that nothing can assuage.
This manner of life can hardly be reckoned among the more noble. It demands no skill and no training. What they mean by a job is the fetching or carrying something, either in the way of transferring cargo from ship to quay or carrying something from one house to another. If it is the former, if one of these fellows gets taken on at the docks, he enters with a sigh; his work is not worth a fourth part of that done by one of the regular staff, and as soon as he has earned enough for the day’s wants he retires, he goes back to his street corner and his public house, he once more seizes on the momentary rapture of a drink, and he rejoins his limp companions.
I have considered the daily life of the factory girl. Let me now consider that of the casual hand, almost as important an element on the riverside as the girl.
In most cases he is a native of the place; he was born on the riverside; he has been brought up on the riverside; he was born and brought up conveniently near the public house, beside which he wastes the leaden hours of his dreary life. A country lad cannot easily become a creature so weak and limp; the father of the casual hand was himself in the same profession, his mother was a factory girl like her of whom we have been speaking.
This man—he never seems to be more than five-and-thirty, or less than thirty—is one of the very few survivors of a numerous family; the riverside families are very large if you count the graves, for the mortality of the young fills the graveyards very rapidly; most of this man’s brothers and sisters are dead—one can hardly, looking at the man himself and his surroundings, say that they are “gone before”; it is best to say only that they are gone, we know not whither. He himself has been so unfortunate, if we may put the case plainly, as to escape the many perils of infancy and childhood. He has not been “overlaid” as a baby, nor run over as a child, nor carried off with diphtheria, scarlatina, croup, or any other of the disorders which continually hover about these streets, nor has he been the victim of bad nourishment and food which was unsuited to him. He has become immune against contagion and infection; wet feet and cold and exposure have been unable to kill him; the close and fetid air of the one-family living room has carried off his brothers and sisters, but has not been able to strike him down; he is like a soldier who has come unscathed through a dozen battles and a malarious campaign. Surely, therefore, this man ought to be a splendid specimen of humanity, strong and upright. The contrary is the case, however. You observe that he is by no means the kind of Briton we should like to exhibit; he hath a sallow complexion, his shoulders are sloping and narrow, his chest is hollow, his walk is shambling, he has no spring in his feet, his hands betray by their clumsiness his ignorance of any craft, he is flat-footed, his eye lacks intelligence, he is low-browed, the intellectual side of him has not been cultivated or even touched; if you talked with him you would find that he has few ideas, that his command of language is imperfect, and that he is practically inarticulate. The best thing that could happen to such a man would be compulsory farm work, but no farmer would have him on any terms, and he himself would refuse such work; he means to go on as he always goes on, to wait outside the public house for the casual job.
As a child and as a boy he was made to attend school—indeed, he liked nothing better than the hours of school. His mother, who found that in order to send the children off clean and tidy to school she had herself to get up early, and, besides, had to assume for herself some outward appearance of cleanliness, threw every possible obstacle in the way of school attendance. But she was firmly overruled by the school-board visitor and by the magistrate. Therefore she abandoned opposition and acquiesced, though with sadness too deep for words, in the inevitable.
The boy remained at school until his fourteenth year, when he was allowed to leave, on passing the fourth standard. If you ask what he had learned one might refer you to any of the “readers” used in London Board-schools, but probably these interesting and valuable works are not within easy reach. It must suffice, therefore, to explain, as in the case of Liz, that the elementary school readers, as a rule, contain selections, snippets, and scraps of knowledge, and that if a boy who passed the fourth standard remembered them all, from the first to the fourth inclusive, they would carry him a very little way indeed toward the right understanding of the round world and all that is therein.
Now comes the question, What good will the boy’s education be to him in the life that lies before him? Truly, in the case of the casual hand, little or none. For, you see, although, apart from the encyclopedic snippets and the scraps, the boy has learned to read and to write, he never needs the latter accomplishment at all, and, as regards the former, he has no books; his father had no books, his friends have no books. But all the world read newspapers. Not all the world; there is a considerable section, including the casual hand and certain others whom we shall meet immediately, who never read the papers. This boy is not going to read the papers; his father never did, his friends never do, he will not. Why should he? The papers contain nothing that is of the least importance to him; they are apparently in a conspiracy to make it impossible for such as himself to drink unless they work. He speedily forgets his scraps of information, and he gets no more from the usual sources.
You must not, however, imagine that he never learns anything. It is impossible for any boy to grow up in a crowded street in complete ignorance. Something he must learn; some views of life he must be forced to frame, though unconsciously. He will grow up in ignorance of the things which form actual life in other circles, but it is with a riverside lad as with a village lad. The latter, brought up in the country, acquires insensibly a vast mass of information and knowledge about the things of the country—the fields, the hedges, the woods, the birds, the creatures—without book, without school, without master; so the riverside lad, by running about on the Stairs and the foreshore, acquires a vast mass of information about the port and the river and the ships and the ways of those who go down to the deep. He knows the tides, he knows the jetsam and the flotsam of the tides, he trudges and wades in the mud of the foreshore to pick up what the tide leaves for him; he knows all the ships, where they come from, whither they are bound, the great liner which puts in at the West India docks, the packet boats, the coasters, the colliers, the Norwegian timber ships, he knows them all; he knows their rig, he knows their names and when to expect them—the river and all that floats upon it are known to him as a book is known to the student. Were it not for the work, the physical activity, the discipline, the obedience, expected of the man before the mast, he would be a sailor. Concerning the imports and the exports of London he knows more than any official of the Board of Trade—that is to say, figures concern him not, but he knows the bales and the casks and the crates and the boxes: are not his friends engaged every day in discharging cargo and taking it in? All this, you will acknowledge, means a good, solid lump of knowledge which may occupy his brain and give him materials for thought and conversation—if he ever did think, which is doubtful, and if he could converse, which is not at all doubtful.
There is another kind of knowledge which the riverside lad picks up. It is the knowledge of the various ways, means, tricks, craft, and cunning by which many of his friends and contemporaries get through life without doing any work. It is with him as with men in other lines; he knows how things are done, but he cannot do them himself; he lacks courage, he lacks the necessary manner, he lacks the necessary quickness; he would be a rogue if he could; he admires successful roguery, but he is unable to imitate or to copy or to practise roguery. Not everyone can defy the law even for a brief spell between the weary periods of “stretch.”
From picking up trifles unguarded and unwatched on the shore to doing the same thing in the streets is but a step. There are plenty of these lads who learn quite early to prey upon the petty trader. I have been told by one of his victims how to watch for and to observe the youthful prowler. You place yourself in one of the busy streets lined with shops in some position, perhaps at a shop-door, where you may observe without being suspected; it is like Jefferies’ rule for observing the wild creatures; assume an attitude of immobility; the people pass up and down, all occupied with their own affairs, unobservant; presently comes along a boy, long-armed, long-legged; his step is silent and slouching, his eyes beneath the peak of his cap glance furtively round; the stall is unprotected; the goods exposed for sale are only guarded by a child, who is looking the other way; then, in a moment, the hand darts out, snatches something, and the lad with the long and slouching step goes on without the least change in his manner, unsuspected. He is ready to pick up anything—a loaf from the baker, an apple from the coster’s cart, an onion from the green-grocer; nothing comes amiss. And he does it for the honor and the glory of it and the joy in the danger. He is not going to become an habitual criminal, not at all; that career requires serious work; he is going to become a casual hand, and he will remember pleasantly in his manhood the cunning and the sleight-of-hand with which as a boy he knew how to lift things from shop and stall and barrow.
I have spoken of the unguarded things upon the foreshore at low tide. There are still lingering by the riverside survivals of the good old days when the whole people lived in luxury on the robberies they committed from the ships loading and unloading in the river. There are barges which go up and down with the tide. At ebb tide they lie in the mud; the men in charge go ashore to drink; the boys then climb on board in search of what they can get. If the barge is laden with sugar they cut holes in the bags and fill their pockets, their hats, their boots, their handkerchiefs with the stuff, which they carry ashore and sell. They get a halfpenny a pound for their plunder. If the barge is laden with coals they carry off all that their clothes will hold; one goes before to warn the rest of danger; plenty of houses on the way are open to them; it is a comparatively safe and certainly a pleasant way of earning a penny or two. It is also a way which brings with it its own punishment. For the great and ever present temptation with the riverside lad is to shirk work; a physical shrinking from hard work is his inheritance; every way by which he can be relieved from work strengthens this physical shrinking; not at one step, not suddenly, does a young man find work impossible for him; the casual hand grows slowly more casual; the waiter on fortune’s jobs grows steadily more inclined to wait; he finds himself tied to the lamp-post opposite the public house; chains bind him to the doors; within is his shrine, his temple, his praying place, his idol; he keeps his hands in his pockets while he keeps his eyes on the swinging door and suffers his mind to dwell all day long on the fragrance of the beery bar.