Part 19 (1/2)

”Talk about the County Council's schools in Poplar, Mr. Crooks; I calls it a scandal, I does.”

”What's the matter?”

”Sending their chimbleys up to Bethnal Green to be swept instead of employing local labour!”

The callers at his house were in no sense confined to his neighbours.

One day it would be C. B. Fry, the cricketer, another day G. K.

Chesterton the critic--neither of them for the first time; and again George R. Sims, Beerbohm Tree, Lord and Lady Denbigh, Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, Father Adderley, Bernard Shaw, Earl Carrington, and the Rev.

Charles Sheldon from the United States--to mention but a few of the men and women of widely different walks of life who are pleased to number him among their friends.

Mr. Sheldon called soon after the great boom of ”In His Steps.” On several occasions Crooks piloted him through the slums of the East End.

While looking round a typical court the American minister asked one of the women when they had seen a parson there.

The answer came, ”We ain't seen no parson down here since we lived here, fifteen years.”

”I don't wonder that people are bad,” remarked Mr. Sheldon to Crooks.

”The wonder is that people are so good as they are.”

Before returning to America Mr. Sheldon sent Crooks a parting note, ending, ”I shall always remember you as you stand, 'in the thick of it,'

for the rights of little children and brother men.”

Outsiders who visit Crooks find him precisely the same man as his neighbours find him. He has personal friends in the Peers' House as well as in the Poor's House, but his manner changes not in the company of either.

This characteristic trait in Crooks led Mr. Chesterton, in his book on ”Charles d.i.c.kens,” into an instructive comparison:--

The English democracy is the most humorous democracy in the world.

The Scotch democracy is the most dignified, while the whole _abandon_ and satiric genius of the English populace come from its being quite undignified in every way. A comparison of the two types might be found, for instance, by putting a Scotch Labour leader like Mr. Keir Hardie alongside an English Labour leader like Mr.

Will Crooks. Both are good men, honest and responsible and compa.s.sionate, but we can feel that the Scotchman carries himself seriously and universally, the Englishman personally and with an obstinate humour. Mr. Keir Hardie wishes to hold up his head as Man, Mr. Crooks wishes to follow his nose as Crooks. Mr. Keir Hardie is very like a poor man in Walter Scott. Mr. Crooks is very like a poor man in d.i.c.kens.

A little incident bears out Mr. Chesterton to the letter. While Crooks was showing a party of t.i.tled people at their request round some of the dark corners of Poplar he was greeted as usual by all the children playing in the streets. Seizing the blackest of them he presented the youngster to one of the ladies of the party, a well-known peeress.

”If this little chap,” said he, ”was as clean as I could wash him and as well dressed as you could dress him, what difference would there be between him and a little prince?”

After the party had finished their round of inspection somebody suggested tea.

”It's no use looking for swell tea shops in Poplar,” said Crooks. ”But if you care to come with me, my wife will just be getting tea ready for the children coming home from school, and no doubt we can find a corner for you at the same table.”

And straightway he led them to Northumberland Street and into his own house without warning, where they shared with the children at the deal table in the kitchen.

Sometimes for whole weeks together in the black days of distress he could never finish his breakfast without being called to the door to advise an out-of-work man or some sorrow-laden woman, or to deal with some case of starvation that brooked no delay.

Of course he often defied the laws of political economy. That is sometimes the only way to prevent people dying from want. A learned professor of political economy, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, was converted to some part at least of Crooks's view in a single morning. The Professor called on him during a winter of hard times, and Crooks showed him how some of his neighbours were living.

”Hunger we can sometimes stand, 'cos we gets used to it,” they heard from one woman, surrounded in her bare tenement by lean and s.h.i.+vering babies; ”but to be frozen with cold on the top of the hunger--that's the thing that makes yer squirm, guv'nor--ain't it, Mr. Crooks?”