Chapter 15

Things began to happen. There was a loud scratch as a hundred feet scuttered backward. The victim sprang up. For a moment astonishment seemed to hold him, as he bleared; then he seemed about to burst with wrath; then he became a cold sportsman. The lady screamed for aid. He spat on his hands. He hitched his trousers. Hands down, chin protruded, he advanced on his opponent with the slow, insidious movement of the street fighter. The other man dashed in, beat him off with the left, and followed it with three to the face with the right. He pressed his man. He ducked a lumbering right swing, and sent a one-two to the body. The lady had lashed herself to a whirlwind of profanity. She spat words at the crowd, and oaths fell like toads from her lips. We below heard the crowd and the lady; but we saw only the principals of the combat until ... until the lady, disregarding the ethics of the game, flew in with screwed face, caught the coming arm of the big man, and pinioned it beneath her own.

"'Elp, 'elp, some of yeh!" she cried. Her husband fastened on to his enemy, tore at his collar with wild fingers, opened his mouth, and tried to bite. The big man struggled with both. The bulky form of the lady was swung back and forth by his cunning arm; and one heard the crowd stand by, press in, rush back, in rhythm to the movements of the battlers. A moment later the lady was down and out. A sudden blow at the breast from the great elbow. I heard her fall.... I heard the gasp of the crowd.

Here and there the blank street was suddenly struck to life. Warm blinds began to wink. One heard the creak of opening windows, and voices: "Why doncher separate 'em? Why cancher shut that plurry row?" With the new light one saw the crowd against a ground of chocolate hue. Here and there a cigarette picked out a face, glowing like an evil eye. All else was dank darkness.

Round and round the combatants went. Two well-set youngsters made a dash upon them, only to be swung from their feet into the crowd. They kicked, twisted, jerked, panted, now staggered a few paces, now stood still, straining silently. Now they were down, now up. Another woman's voice wailed across the unhappy water in the mournful accent of Belfast: "Fr-r-rank, Fr-rank, where arrre ye? Oh, Fr-rank, Fr-rank--ye br-reak me hear-r-t!"

Then Chuck Lightfoot, known also as The Panther, The Croucher, and The Prize Packet, shifted from my side. I looked at him. "Fed up on this, I am. Wait here." He vaulted from the deck of the tug to the landing-stage, strode up the gang-plank, and was lost in the long shaft of darkness.

From above one heard a noise--a nasty noise: the sound of a man's head being banged on the pavement. Frank's wife screamed: "Separate 'em! He's killin' 'im! Why don't some one do somethin'?"

Another woman cried: "I'll be sick. Stop 'em! I daresn't look."

Then everything stopped. We heard a low hum, swelling swiftly to a definite cry. The word "dead--dead--dead" flitted from mouth to mouth. Some turned away. Others approached as near as they dared, retreating fearfully when a push from behind drove them forward....

But nobody was dead. Into the centre light had dashed Chuck Lightfoot. Chuck Lightfoot was a pugilistic manager. He was a lot of other things besides. He was the straightest boy I have ever met in that line. He had every high animal quality that a man should have. And he had a cold nerve that made men twice his size afraid of him.

The fight was stopped. Two blows from Chuck had stopped it. The crowd gathered round and gave first aid to both combatants, while Chuck faced them, and waited for assaults. We climbed up and stood with him, but nothing happened. Tragedy is so often imminent in this region, and so often trickles away to rubbish. The crowd was vociferous and gestic. It swooped about us, and inquired, conjectured, disapproved, condemned.

Then came several blue helmets and swift dispersal.

The affair was over.

AN ART NIGHT

CHELSEA

_A LONDON MOMENT_

_Often have I, in my desolate years, Flogged a jaded heart in loud saloons; Often have I fled myself with tears, Wandering under pallid, passionate moons._

_Often have I slunk through pleasured rites, Lonely in the tumult of decay; Often marked the hectic London nights Flowing from the violet-lidded day._

_Yet, because of you, the world has been Kindlier. Oh, little heart-o'-rose, I have glimpsed a beauty seldom seen In this labyrinthine mist of woes._

_Beauty smiles at me from common things, All the way from Fleet Street to the Strand; Even in the song the barmaid sings I have found a fresh enchanted land._

_Pass me by, you little vagrant joy. Brush me from your delicate mimic world. Nothing of you now can e'er annoy, Since your beauty has my heart empearled._

_Pass me by; and only let me say: Glad I am for pain of loving you, Glad--for, in the tumult of decay, Life is nobler than I ever knew._

AN ART NIGHT

CHELSEA

"The choicest bit of London!" That is William Dean Howells' impression of Chelsea. And, if you would perceive rightly the soul of Chelsea, you must view it through the pearl-grey haze of just such a temperament as that of the suave American novelist. If you have not that temperament, then Chelsea is not for you; try Hampstead or Streatham or Bayswater.

Of all suburbs it is the most subtle. It has more soul in one short street than you will find in the whole mass of Oxford Street and Piccadilly. There is something curiously feminine and intoxicating in the quality of its charm, something that evokes the silver-pensive mood. One visions it as a graceful spinster--watered silks, ruffles, corkscrew curls, you know, with lily fingers caressing the keys of her harpsichord. Pass down Cheyne Walk at whatever time you will, and you are never alone; little companies of delicate fancy join you at every step. The gasworks may gloom at you from the far side. The L.C.C. cars may hum and clang. But fancy sweeps them away. It is like sitting amid the barbarities of a Hyde Park drawing-room, in the emerald dusk, listening to the pathetic wheezing of a musical-box, ridiculously sweet:--

Oh, don't you remember the days when we roamed, Sweet Phillis, by lane and by lea?

Whatever you want in Chelsea--that you will find, assuming, of course, the possession of the Chelsea temperament. Whistler discovered her silvern beauty when he first saw her reclining by the river, beautifying that which beautifies her. All about Chelsea the colours seem to chime with their backgrounds as though they loved them; and when the lamps are lighted, flinging soft shadows on sixteenth and seventeenth-century gables and doorways and passages, then she becomes a place of wonder, a Bagdad, a treasure-ground for the artist.

And the artists have discovered her. Chelsea has much to show. Hampstead, Kensington, Mayfair--these be rich in gilt-trapping names, but no part of England can produce such a shining array of names, whose greatness owes nothing to time, place, or social circumstance: the names of those whose greatness is of the soul, and who have shaken the world with the beauty they have revealed to us. But Art has now taken possession of her, and it is as the studio of the artist that Chelsea is known to-day. Step this way, if you please. We draw the curtain. _Vie de Bohème!_ But not, mark you, the _vie de Bohème_ of Murger. True, Rodolphe and Marcel are here, and Mimi and Musette. But the studio is not the squalid garret that we know. We have changed all that. Rodolphe writes light verse for the "largest circulations." Mimi draws fashion plates, and dresses like the Duchess of the novelettes. Marcel--well, Marcel of Chelsea may be poor, but his is only a relative poverty. He is poor in so far as he dines for two shillings instead of five. The Marcel of to-day who is accustomed to skipping a meal by stress of circumstances doesn't live in Chelsea. He simply couldn't do it; look at the rents. He lives in Walworth Road or Kentish Town. No; there is a _vie de Bohème_ at Chelsea, but it is a Bohemia of coffee liqueurs and Turkish cigarettes.

The beginnings of the delectable suburb are obscure. It seems to have assumed importance on the day when Henry VIII "acquired" its manor, which led to the building of numerous sycophantic houses. The Duchess of Monmouth had a residence here, with the delightful John Gay as secretary. Can one imagine a modern Duchess with a modern poet as secretary? The same house was later occupied by the gouty dyspeptic Smollett, who wrote all his books at the top of his bad temper. Then came--but one could fill an entire volume with nothing but a list of the goodly fellowship of Chelsea.

The book about Chelsea has yet to be written. Such a book should disclose to us the soul of the place, with its eternal youth and eternal antiquity. It should introduce us to its charming ghosts--it is difficult to name one disagreeable person in this pageant; even the cantankerous Smollett was soothed when he came under its spell. It should enable us to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer acquaintance, with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten laureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, George Meredith, Swinburne, Holman Hunt, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Oscar and Willie Wilde, Count d'Orsay, George Eliot, and a host of lesser but equally adorable personalities whose names must come "among those present." It should show us its famous places. It should afford us peep-holes into the studios of famous artists--Augustus John's studio is a revelation in careful disarrangement; it should take us round a "Show Sunday"; it should reconstruct the naïve gaieties of Cremorne; and, finally, it should recreate and illumine all the large, forgotten moments in the lives of those apostles of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the soul of Chelsea has fused with more of herself than men may know; ending, perhaps, with a disquisition on the effects of environment on the labours of genius.

Such a book must be done by a stranger, an observer, one with a gracious pen, a delicate, entirely human mind. There is one man above all who is divinely appointed for the task.

Please, Mr. W. D. Howells, will you write it for us?

* * * * *

I was strolling in philosophic mood down the never-ending King's Road, one November night, debating whether I should drop in at the Chelsea Palace, or have just one more at the "Bells," when I ran into the R.B.A. He is a large man, and running into him rather upsets one's train of thought. When I had smoothed my nose and dusted my trousers, I said: "Well, what about it?" He said: "Well, what about it?"

So we turned into the "Six Bells," the evening haunt of every good artist. He said he hadn't much money, so what about it? We decided on a Guinness to begin with, and then he ordered some Welsh Rarebits, while I inspected the walls of the saloon, which are decorated with nothing but originals, many of them bearing resounding names. In the billiard-room he introduced me to Augustus John and three other famous men who might not like it known that they drink beer in public-houses. When the Welsh Rarebits were announced, we went upstairs to the cosy dining-room and feasted gorgeously, watching, from the window, the many-coloured life of Chelsea....

When every scrap of food on our plates was gone, we had another Guinness, and I went back to his studio, a beautiful room with oak panelling and electric light, which he rented from a travelling pal for the ridiculous sum of three shillings a week. It stood next to the reconstructed Crosby Hall, and looked out on a wide prospect of sloping roofs, peppered with a sharp light.

He sat down and showed me his day's work. He showed me etchings, oils, pastels. He told me stories. He showed me caricatures of the famous people with whom he had _bohèmed_. Then, at about ten o'clock, he said it was rather dull; and what about it? He knew a place, quite near, where some of the boys were sure to be; what about it?

So we descended the lone staircase, and came out to the windy embankment, where self-important little tugs were raking the water with the beams of their headlights. Thence we made many turnings, and stopped at a house near the Models' Club. At this club, which was formed only in 1913, the artists may go at any time to secure a model--which is a distinct boon. The old way was for the model to call on the artist, the result being that the unfortunate man was pestered with dozens of girls for whom he had no use, while the one model he really wanted never appeared. The club combines the advantages of club, employment bureau, and hotel. There is no smoking-room; every room is a smoking-room, for there are two things which are essential to the comfort of the girl-model, and they are cigarettes and sweets. These are their only indulgences, for, obviously, if you are depending for your livelihood on your personal figure, self-denial and an abstemious life are compulsory.

If you want to know what is doing in the art world, who is painting what, and why, then get yourself invited to tea--China tea only. The gathering is picturesque, for the model has, of course, the knack of the effective pose, not only professionally but socially. It is a beautiful club, and it is one more answer to the eternal question Why Girls Don't Marry. With a Models' Club, the Four Arts Club, the Mary Curzon Hotel, and the Lyceum Club, why on earth should they?

The R.B.A. pulled up short and said there we were, and what about it? We knocked at the door, and were admitted by an anarchist. At least, I think he was an anarchist, because he was just like the pictures. I have met only eighteen real anarchists, two of whom had thrown a bomb; but I could never really believe in them; they wore morning coats and bowler hats and were clean-shaven.

"Where are they?" asked the R.B.A.

"They're awa' oopstairs, laddie," said the anarchist. "Taak heed ye dinna stoomble; the carrrpet's a wee bit loose."

We crossed the tiny hall and ascended the shabby stairs. From an open door trickled the tones of a cheap piano and the mellow, philosophic chant of the 'cello. They were playing Elgar's "Salut d'Amour." The room was dark save for one candle at the piano and the dancing firelight. In the dusk it looked like Balestieri's picture of "Beethoven" which adorns every suburban drawing-room with a leaning towards the Artistic. People were sprawled here and there, but to distinguish them was impossible. I fell over some one's foot, and a light treble gurgled at me, "Sorry, old boy!" I caught a whisk of curls as the thin gleam of the candle fell that way. The R.B.A. crossed the room as one who was familiar with its topography, and settled himself in a far chair. The anarchist took my arm, and said:--

"Do ye sit down whurr ye can, laddie. And ye'll ha' a drink?"

I fell over some more feet and collapsed on a low settee. I found myself by the side of a lady in solemn crimson. Her raven hair was hanging down her back. Her arms were bare. She smoked a Virginia cigarette vindictively. Sometimes she leaned forward, addressed the piano, and said: "Shut that row, Mollie, can't you. We want to talk."

The anarchist brought me a Scotch-and-soda, and then she became aware of my presence. She looked at me; she looked at the drink. She said to the anarchist: "Where's mine?" He said: "What is it?" "Crem-dermont!" she snapped.

Out of the smoky glooms of the room came light laughter and merry voices. One saw dimly, as in a dream, graceful forms reclining gracefully, attended by carelessly dressed but distinguished young men. Some of these raised their voices, and one heard the self-proud accent of Oxford. The music stopped, and the girls sprawled themselves more and more negligently, nestling to the rough coats of the boys. The haze of smoke thickened. I prepared for a boring evening.

One of the Oxford boys said he knew an awfully good story, but it was rather risky, you know. I pricked up my ears. Did we know the story--story about a fellah--fellah who had an aunt, you know? And fellah's aunt was most frightfully keen on dogs and all that, you know.... After three minutes of it I lost interest in the story. It concerned Old George and Herbert and young Helen, and various other people who seemed familiar to everybody but myself.

I never heard the finish of it. I became rather interested in a scene near the window, where a boy of about my own age was furiously kissing a girl somewhat younger. Then the lady at my side stretched a long arm towards me, and languished, and making the best of a bad job, I languished, too. When the funny story and the fellah's aunt had been disposed of, some one else went to the piano and played Debussy, and the anarchist brought me another drink; and the whole thing was such painfully manufactured Bohemianism that it made me a little tired. The room, the appointments, the absence of light, Debussy, the drinks, and the girls' costumes were so obviously part of an elaborate make-up, an arrangement of life. The only spontaneous note was that which was being struck near the window. I decided to slip away, and fell down the ragged stairs into Chelsea, and looked upon the shadow-fretted streets, where the arc-lamps, falling through the trees, dappled the pavements with light.

The skies were dashed with stars and a sick moon. It was trying to snow. I tripped down the steps from the door, and ran lightly into a girl who stood at the gate, looking up at the room I had just left. The cheek that was turned toward me was clumsily daubed with carmine and rouge. Snowflakes fell dejectedly about her narrow shoulders. She just glanced at me, and then back at the window. I looked up, too. The piano was at it again, and some one was singing. The thread of light just showed you the crimson curtains and the heavy oak beams. The pianist broke into Delilah's song, and the voice swam after it. It was a clear, warm voice, typical of the fifth-rate concert platform. But the girl, her face uplifted, dropped her lips in a half-whispered exclamation of wonder, "Cuh!" I should have said that she was, for the first time, touching finger-tips with beauty. It moved her as something comic should have done. Her face lit to a smile, and then a chuckle of delight ran from her.

The voice was doing its best. It sank to despair, it leaped to lyric passion, it caressed a low note of ecstatic pain, and then, like a dew-delighted bird, it fled up and hovered on a timid note of appeal. The girl giggled. As the voice died on a long, soft note, she laughed aloud, and swallowed. She looked around and caught my eye. It seemed that she had something about which she must talk.

... "Not bad, eh?" she said.

"No," I answered. "Not so dusty."

"Makes you feel ... kind of rummy, you know, don't it? Wonder what it feels like to sing like that, eh? Makes me ... sort of ... 'fyou understand ... funny like. Makes me want to...."

From the window came one of the Oxford voices. "_No_ EARTHLY, dear old girl. You'll _never_ sing. Your _values_, you know, and _all_ that are...."

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

_STEPNEY CAUSEWAY_

_Beyond the pleading lip, the reaching hand, Laughter and tear; Beyond the grief that none would understand; Beyond all fear. Dreams ended, beauty broken, Deeds done, and last words spoken, Quiet she lies._

_Far, far from our delirious dark and light, She finds her sleep. No more the noisy silences of night Shall hear her weep. The blossomed boughs break over Her holy breast to cover From any eyes. Till the stark dawn shall drink the latest star, So let her be. O Love and Beauty! She has wandered far And now comes home to thee._

A RUSSIAN NIGHT

SPITALFIELDS AND STEPNEY

The Russian quarter always saddens me. For one thing, it has associations which scratch my heart regularly every month when my affairs take me into those parts. Forgetting is the most wearisome of all pains to which we humans are subject; and for some of us there is so much to forget. For some of us there is Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, and the devastating loveliness of Isabel. For another thing, its atmosphere is so depressingly Slavonic. It is as dismal and as overdone as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. How shall I give you the sharp flavour of it, or catch the temper of its streets?

It seems impossible that one should ensnare its elusive spirit. Words may come, but they are words, hard and stiff-necked and pedestrian. One needs symbols and butterflies.

* * * * *

Beauty is a strange bird. Hither and thither she flies, and settles where she will; and men will say that she is found here and there--sometimes in Perugia, sometimes in Mayfair, sometimes in the Himalaya. I have known men who found her in the dark melancholy of Little Russia, and I can understand them. For beauty appears, too, in various guise; and some men adore her in silks and some in rags. There are girls in this quarter who will smite the heart out of you, whose beauty will cry itself into your very blood. White's Row and the fastnesses of Stepney do not produce many choice blooms; there are no lilies in these gardens of weeds. The girls are not romantic to regard or to talk with. They are not even clean. The secrets of their toilet are not known to me, but I doubt if soap and water ever appear in large quantities. And yet.... They walk or lounge, languorous and heavy-lidded, yet with a curious suggestion of smouldering fire in their drowsy gaze. Rich, olive-skinned faces they have, and hair either gloomy or brassy, and caressing voices with the lisp of Bethnal Green. You may see them about the streets which they have made their own, carrying loads of as enchanting curls as Murger's Mimi.

But don't run away with the idea that they are wistful, or luscious, or romantic; they are not. Go and mix with them if you nurse that illusion. Wistfulness and romance are in the atmosphere, but the people are practical ... more practical and much less romantic than Mr. John Jenkinson of Golder's Green.

You may meet them in the restaurants of Little Montagu Street, Osborn Street, and the byways off Brick Lane. The girls are mostly cigarette-makers, employed at one of the innumerable tobacco factories in the district. Cigarette-maker recalls "Carmen" and Marion Crawford's story; but here are only the squalid and the beastly. Brick Lane and the immediate neighbourhood hold many factories, each with a fine odour--bed-flock, fur, human hair, and the slaughter-house. Mingle these with sheep-skins warm from the carcass, and the decaying refuse in every gutter, and you will understand why I always smoke cigars in Spitalfields. In these cafés I have met on occasion those seriocomics, Louise Michel, Emma Goldmann, and Chicago May. Beilis, the hero of the blood-ritual trial, was here some months ago; and Enrico Malatesta has visited, too. Among the men--fuzzy-bearded, shifty-eyed fellows--there are those who have been to Siberia and back. But do not ask them about Siberia, nor question how they got back. There are some things too disgusting even to talk about. Siberia is not exciting; it is filthy. But you may sit among them, the men and the dark, gazelle-eyed girls; and you may take caviare, tea-and-lemon, and black bread; and conversation will bring you a proffered cigarette.