Part 5

Soho, the dingy resort of foreign refugees, was formerly a district of great mansions, glimpses of whose former grandeur can still be distinguished beneath their present grime.

James the First's unlucky son, Henry, Raleigh's friend and the people's favourite, built himself a mansion in Gerrard Street, behind the site of the present Shaftesbury Theatre. Dryden lived in the same street, and here stood Dr. Johnson's favourite club, the Turk's Head.

Charles the Second's "natural" son, the Duke of Monmouth, the ill-starred, ambitious soldier who figures as the hero of Dryden's "Absalom," and who was beheaded, at the third stroke of the axe, on Tower Hill, had a palace in Soho Square where now stand gloomy warehouses; and in the same square, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Gilbert Burnet, and George Colman the Elder, formerly made history and literature where Crosse & Blackwell now make pickles.

The whole district is, as Bottom might have said with more than usual accuracy, "translated." It is become the stronghold and fastness of the foreigner and of his cheap and excellent restaurants.

Nowhere in the world are cheaper or more varied dinners to be had. The odours of the fried fish of Jerusalem here mingle with the perfume of the sauerkraut of Germany, and the cheeses of France and Italy; and over all, blending them into one harmonious whole, serenely soars the powerful aroma of triumphant garlic.

This is but one of the phases of an amazing latter-day development of the Restaurant in London.

Shall I ever forget the horror of the first dinner I ever had in England? The Gargantuan slabs of semi-raw beef, and the bitter, black, treacly "porter," seemed to my mind certain signs that I had fallen among a race of savages and cannibals. But now, instead of the mean, dingy, dirty, fly-blown chop-houses that formerly mocked and balked London's appetite, we have a collection of marble palaces, in which daintily prepared repasts are retailed at lower prices than were formerly charged for the chop-houses' superannuated chunks of brutal flesh.

The Adelaide Gallery, one of the largest of these restaurants, has taken the place of a most respectable Gallery of Practical Science, and the Oxford Street store of the most democratic of wine-importers grows its cobwebs in what, fifty years ago, was accounted one of the most fashionable resorts in Europe. "Two thousand persons of rank and fashion," as I read in an old magazine, "assembled in the splendid structure" at its opening. And it _was_ a splendid structure then, for the architect had introduced niches containing statues of "the heathen deities," with "Britannia, George III., and Queen Charlotte" thrown in! And now, I presume, they are thrown out--or rounded off into a perfectly harmonious circle perhaps, by a supplemental and complementary statue of Ally Sloper.

These tokens of Democracy's advance are not unpleasing; the growth of the restaurant tendency affords one particular pleasure, as suggesting that the English are losing some of their dominant insular fault of sullen individualism, and are becoming more healthily disposed to the communal life.

Much less hopeful is the swelling grandeur of the London gin-palace--the modern substitute for the pleasant tavern.

In mediæval times, if the earle saw a stately edifice with stained-glass windows, statuary, and everything gorgeous, he would enter with reverence to stoop his head; now, he goes in with fourpence to soak it.

In mediæval times he would be seen crossing himself with the holy water as he emerged; now, as he comes out, he wipes it off on his coat tail.

In mediæval times, for their sins and sorrows and the glory of God, the nobles built cathedrals. In this more vulgar age, for the people's griefs and the lords' profit, England's nobility build glorified pot-houses.

In mediæval times, our chivalry won their knighthood and titles by spoiling the heathen at the sword's point; now, they secure peerages by spoiling English men and women with adulterated and brutalising liquors.

This is what we call the progress of civilisation--

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

But that is neither here nor there.

A TRUCE FROM BOOKS AND MEN

Dreaming, dozing, Fallow, fallow, and reposing.

DR. MACKAY.

There is an old Dutch pier at Gorleston separating the open sea from the mouth of the river that leads to Yarmouth. It is not ornamental; it has no pavilion, no railings, no band, but only capstans, tarry ropes, a small white-washed observatory, and--the most surprising jumble of odd, cosy, sheltered nooks overhanging the blue water, where one may sprawl all day in any garb and any posture, and, soothed by the sea's lullaby, blink at the sun, or, with the aid of our country's literature, go to sleep.

There is nothing to pay to go on, and our pier is therefore frequented by no objectionable persons. It is true there are a few mistaken damsels who sketch or paint the endless succession of spectacular marvels laid on by tide and clouds; but I think they mean no harm.

As for the apathetic individuals who come with bits of string and worms, pretending to catch fish, everybody knows that they never do; indeed, after observing them through several waking intervals, I have come to the conclusion that their only object is to politely aid our slumbers by the sight of their languidly deliberate preparations, and calm, leisurely hours of uninterrupted waiting.

As for the rest of us, we are frankly, honestly, disreputably lazy, and dowdily, drowsily sprawl and dawdle the daily clock-round.

If the wind be southerly, we take our nap on the river side of the pier, and open our eyes at intervals to scan the fishing-boats with flapping sails, as they depart to or return from their two months' strife with wind and wave to reap for us the harvest of the sea. Every vessel in Yarmouth's swarming fleet must round this pier's windy point at coming in or going out, and cross the stream that swiftly flows and whirls beneath our feet. All through the day, in and out they pass, to and from their perilous work; late at night we hail and greet them as they glide with majestic sail through the reflected moonbeams, and disappear like huge, towering phantoms into the darkness and mystery beyond.

These, with a few timber-laden steamers from Norway--their shifted cargoes, sloping decks, and fearfully-listed hulls attesting often to the fury of the Baltic gales--are the only link connecting us with the far distant world of commerce to which we once belonged. These, and--I must not forget the great morning and evening events of our drowsy days--the two big passenger steamers that set out before breakfast for Clacton and London, and the two that heavily swing into the narrow channel at dusk, with ever fresh wonder to our awakened and densely assembled holiday population.

When the wind is northerly we shift over to the south side of our pier and face the Gorleston bay and beach. Lo, what a transformation! No trace of the workaday world remains. A scene of pure enchantment, of sunny brightness and rest.

A semicircle of crumbling sandcliffs forms the background of the bay; and from the verge of a narrow streak of yellow sand, without a pebble, stretches the green, the blue, the yellow sea--nestling in its intimate nooks, splashing against the wooden promenade, or dashing with imposing affectation of fierceness over our promiscuously scattered breakwaters of granite.

We have one hotel, incongruously conspicuous on the neck of ground dividing sea from river at the pier's base; but we have no theatres, no music-halls, no punch-and-judy show, no niggers, no "amusements" (!!!) of any sort. We have a few bathing-machines upon the beach, and a vast picturesque camp of bathing-tents, but not any other sign of commercial enterprise. There is no esplanade to swagger on; no electric lights to set off our beauties by night; no illumination over all the "promenade" and mignonette gardens and pier after sunset, except the light of the moon and stars.

We _can_ see the garish lights of Yahoo Yarmouth, flaunting through the night, two miles away; but, if we can help it, we don't.

* * * * *

The only thing we do with assiduity is bathing, unless we belong to the army of bare-legged water-babies who unceasingly "paddle" and build castles on the beach.

Sometimes we carry our day-dreams in small boats across the glistering sea, and lazily drift or tack before the languid breeze.

It has even occurred that foolish relapses into energy have borne us upon bicycles through leafy lanes to lazier Suffolk Broads; but these excesses are rare and brief. No man could face these sleepy inland waters and preserve an active spirit; the apathetic willows on the banks dreamily curtsey as if too tired to hold up their heads.

But let Dr. Mackay, who opened this chapter, also speak the last word--

There's a humming of bees beneath the lime, And the deep blue heaven of a southern clime Is not more beautifully bright Than this English sky with its islets white, And its Alp-like clouds, so snowy fair!-- The birch leaves dangle in balmy air.

A RUDE AWAKENING

Men must work and women must weep; There's little to earn and many to keep, Though the harbour bar be moaning.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

What is this Life at all, and what its purport? Is Good its aim or evil? If roses be fair, what need of thorns? God sends youth and health and beauty; what devil brings sickness, grief, and decay?

When I wrote the irrelevant, drowsy chapter preceding this, the sun shone so kindly, and so benignly Nature beamed, that Care was as a dream of what never could have been.

To live was to be blessed; to think was to enjoy. Nature was a doting mother that fed us with bounty and kissed us fondly to rest; the earth a sunny garden; heaven a waste of luxurious fancy.

How blind I must have been! What a glorious blindness it would be, if----

Ah! "If"!

* * * * *

My drop from the rosy clouds began pleasantly enough. I was nooning by the river-side, when an ancient, second-hand Danish pirate, with improbable pantomime whiskers, like tangled seaweed, fixedly looking at the lower part of my waistcoat, casually remarked, "Seems to me you're pining away down there."

"Yes," I answered briskly, "I'm not the man I was."

"No," said he meditatively, "we're none of us as young as we was; but, come, you can't be more than forty-three."

"I am," I answered indignantly, "no more than thirty-six."

"Well," said he, with what may have been a consolatory intent, "we can't help our looks, none of us. I'm judging you'll not be for the lifeboat when you're my age."

I had decided to speak to him no more, but an undefined hope to get the better of his sauciness prompted me to ask, "What age may that be?"

"Fifty-five," he answered.

"You look," said I vindictively, "a great deal older."

Scarce had the words left my mouth than I was ashamed of them. I saw for the first time now that he was crippled, and walked with a stick. Rough weather and a hard life had left on him a low-water mark of rust and wear and decay. But he answered, gently enough, "It's like enough I may. I've been very bad this three week. Got tangled in a rope and fell overboard, and was dragged ashore through the water from the pierhead to the harbour. My uncle and two other young fellows was in the boat, but"--

The "two other young fellows" was tempting, but I did not smile.

"They couldn't get me in," he continued unconsciously, "and I got knocked about a bit. My shoulder was main bad. I'm crawling about again, but it's hard work doing nothing."

I repeated the words to myself as I walked away, "hard work doing nothing"--especially when "doing nothing" means a bare cupboard and hungry children, eh?

Gorleston is perhaps not altogether so cheerful as I thought.

Unsneck the door to Care and you might as well take it off its hinges.

Late the same night, I was talking to the watchman at the end of the pier. A Yarmouth fishing-smack sailed out into the gloom.

"Rough night," the watchman cried to the skipper.

"Ay, ay," replied a gruff voice from below; and a moment later the smack was gone.

"Better here than on that boat to-night," I observed, as the black sail faded and merged in the black cloud.

"Ay," the watchman answered; "but they'll see worse before they see home again. There's queer weather to be found on the Dogger Bank in an eight weeks' trawling. I mind me of three hundred and sixty drowned in one March gale, and upwards of two hundred lost two or three years ago one Christmas night. Then there's always the risk of collisions in the fog, men washed overboard in a gale, or crippled in the small boat when they put out, as they must whatever the weather, when the Billingsgate steamer comes round in the night for the fish."

"H'm! And what pay sends willing men to face these risks?"

"Penny an hour, from time they start till they get back. That's fourteen shilling a week."

"And when they come home?"

"Pay stops."

"God! how can their women and children live?"

"Nay, now you're asking something. But they're better off than them as waits ashore all winter, and can't get a job."

"Fourteen shillings! Why do they stand it?"

"Because they can't help theirsels. There's too many waiting to take t' place o' them as has a job."

"Have they no trade union?"

"They've trouble enough to keep theirsels in work; who'd keep them if they went on strike?"

"Fourteen shillings a week! It's shameful."

"Happen it is, and happen the shame is not so much the men's as yours."

"Mine? How?"

"I suppose you buy and eat fish?"

"Yes, and pay the price I'm asked; if I paid twice as much, would the fishermen get the money?"

"Nay, I don't know. We look to you clever folk in London to settle these things."

They are not awe-struck by the superiority of the "clever folk from London," these outspoken men of the sea. From the taciturn solitary policeman, who looks on us with undisguised contempt, to the ancient mariners by the river-side, who gaze on us with the puzzled stare that a Viking might have cast on a French dancing-master, the natives give one the painful impression that they regard us as prodigies of ignorance and uselessness.

But--we have money. People who don't seem to know anything or to do anything always have. And they that have to wrest sustenance from the churlish sea at Gorleston, are disposed to do much for money--even to tolerate inquisitive, pompously patronising, incessantly cackling Cockneys.

I went down to the sea thinking to mend my tired body with the blow of the lusty spray, but I am judging 'twas perhaps my mind most needed change of air.

They are not so much our lungs that get stifled in the cities as our brains and hearts. We are so hemmed in with glittering shams and lies that we forget Truth's features.

What do we know of work and trade, we that scramble for gold dust in London? What do we know of Life, we that seek it in the perfumed mire and corruption of the West End? They are not the usurers and money-changers that make the wealth of nations, nor the painted splendours of Babylon that ripen our harvests, nor the swinish orgies of Sodom and Gomorrah that make the pulses beat with healthy joy of life.

One stews in London's vitiated atmosphere, and one forgets. One's perceptions grow numb, and dull and blunted; one's knowledge twisted, warped, awry. We are made dizzy by the rush and whirl, and cheated by specious shows and make-believes. Our days and nights are passed in fever, our thoughts are as the babbling of a grim delirium, and there is no health in us.

Contango? The odds for the Leger? The new ballet?

"We went out twice that night," said the lifeboatman; "one of our men broke his arm th' first trip, and he wur main wild when he couldn't go th' second time."

"And did you save them all?"

"Ay, we got 'em all off--both lots; though they'd give up hope. They couldn't see us till we came close up to them, for it was a dirty night, and the sea was running high, but they heard the cheers we give them when we got within calling distance, poor things."

That makes a better picture than the Stock Exchange or Piccadilly Circus. The thought of the ships that sink, of the men and women and children that go down into the cold depths, "their eyes and mouths to be filled with the brown sea sand"--that is not good to think of. But the picture of the rescue, is not that glorious?

The sound of the human cheer across the roar of Nature's battle--think of it in the ears of the crew that had "given up hope"! The thrill, the gladness, the doubt, the eager lookout. The cheer again, clearer, huskier, certain now, and full of brave comfort. A chance then for life? A chance for the wailing women and the weeping bairns? Then a glimpse, deep down in the great trough of the sea, of a boat staggering and rolling amidst the waves, manfully propelled, perceptibly approaching, despite wind and sleet and drenching wave, with rough men's voices giving promise of life through the darkness of the storm!

Ah! gentlemen of the Spiers & Pond and money-making world, isn't it a brave picture to think of? The cooling dash of ocean spray is delightfully refreshing. To think that our race can still breed heroes; that even we, if we could or would but shake off the Old Man of the Earth that sits upon our shoulders, might perhaps be heroes too; that we too might risk our lives to snatch storm-tossed unfortunates from the clutch of death--is it not a blessed thought?

It is the custom of our age to boast of its civilisation. When we stand erect we fear to hurtle the stars with our foreheads as we pass under. We smile upon our accumulations of wealth and the monuments of our commerce, and esteem ourselves the crowning triumphs of evolution, the ultimate perfection, Nature's finished masterpieces. But how small, how mean, and how insignificant we Londoners look by the side of these stalwart and fearless fishermen of Suffolk and Norfolk.

They know nothing of Westralians, S. P. prices, futures, or the Sisters Bobalink's new dance; but what a lot they have to teach us!

* * * * *

The weather changes swiftly at Gorleston, and when the white foam-horses ride over the hidden sand-banks, even a Cockney-tripper may feel the sense of peril.

Ever since we came we have seen the gaunt masts of one wreck spectrally haunting our feast from behind the lightship in the east. Now there is another on a sand-bank close to shore, a little to the north of the river's mouth.

It had been a glorious day, but towards evening the storm-clouds gathered and the wind rose in fitful gusts. A Baltic steamer, clearing out of the harbour at dusk, blocked up the mouth of the river for some hours owing to a fouled anchor, till at last, her cable being cut, she succeeded in getting to sea.

Meantime, a Yarmouth trawler, returning to port with a week's catch of fish, was misled by the lights of the disabled vessel, and, manoeuvring to get clear, backed on to the dangerous North Sand, whose floor is thickly strewed with remains of former wrecks.

From the pier, through the blackening night, we watched the crew's futile efforts to get off again. It was very like a fly's efforts to escape from a spider's web, and evidently as profitless. The more they struggled, the deeper in the sand they sank.

Now, boom! through the night came the bang of a great gun. The Admiralty men in charge of the Board of Trade life-saving apparatus were about to begin operations. We saw lights flickering to and fro on the Denes--the low bank of land between the river and the sea. Presently, with a prodigious whiz, up to the black sky and across the ship shot the rocket, bearing the lifeline that would bring the shipwrecked mariners to land! Before this, however, one of the five lifeboats maintained on this dangerous coast had been safely launched through the surf, and reached the wreck almost as soon as the line.

But neither line nor boat would the captain of the smack accept: to leave his ship meant loss of property, and property in England is of all things the most sacred.

The night by this time had become wild and fearful. The wind shrieked viciously; the waves broke ashore with a hungry roar; and from the swart clouds came down squalls of rain, merging land and lights and sea and sky in one blur of desolation.

There was no more to be seen. The crew of the stranded trawler deemed it safe to remain where they were. So we curious Cockneys, perceiving no hope of further fresh sensations, hastened us home to cosy beds and warmth.

* * * * *

I had just gone to sleep when a boom that shook the bed roused me with a start.

I jumped up and went to the window.

A signal-rocket had been fired from the coastguard station opposite our lodging.

I slipped on some clothes and went out. The night was wilder than ever, the driving rain heavier, the wind louder, the sea rougher. I saw the coastguard-men bury themselves in oilskins, and sally out with lanterns to their station on the Denes. When they took boat to cross the river, I had perforce to leave, and so, wet through, went back to my bedroom window.

For hours I watched the fitful lights on the Denes, and the wavering light on the mast of the ship beyond. Once, in the staring light of a "flare," I saw her plainly--her stark, white, sloping deck looming ghostly through the darkness; then, another rocket-line went flashing across the black waste, and I hoped the crew were safe.

* * * * *

Next morning I learned from our landlady's son that he had been all night in the lifeboat; that despite the smack-skipper's first refusal to leave his ship the lifeboat had stood by him for hours, the waves washing over the stranded vessel the while; that, at last, finding the skipper obstinate, the lifeboatmen had returned to shore, but had scarcely landed when the new view which isolation lent to his perilous position, caused the skipper to signal for their return. They went back accordingly, and at three in the morning safely landed the shipwrecked crew in Gorleston.

All through the next day, without rest or respite, the hardy young boatman unceasingly engaged on salvage duty. I accidentally heard, by the way, that on the previous day he had plunged twice into the sea from the breakwater to save two children who had fallen in--for which service he was munificently rewarded with five shillings.

At night, in answer to a question, he told me, "Sometimes in winter we've been out as much as three times in one night, and been at it again the night after. You soon get used to it, you know."

H'm! I _don't_ know: I only know that after that night I was laid up with a chill, whilst he made no more of his labours, his perils and exposure than if they had been part of a picnic; and I also know that when, in inquiring about my health, he wistfully struggled to tune his storm-tanned hardy face to a note of decent sympathy, he made me feel ashamed of my lubberly fragility.

Yet--tut, tut! Can I not win more pay for a nice little cackling article about his work, than this dreadnought will get for saving six men's and two children's lives?

Since everything is justly ordained in our best of all possible societies, my greater gain must prove, despite appearances, that I am this man's superior.

Besides, he speaks to me with manifest respect, and calls me "Sir."

A few nights later, there was another gale; a trawler was driven ashore, and her crew saved by the rocket apparatus.

Two or three nights later a Lowestoft smack was run down by a Norwegian barque, and the skipper and mate were drowned; one left a wife and four children, the other a wife and nine!