Part 1 (1/2)

Crowded Out! and Other Sketches.

by Susie F. Harrison.

PREFACE.

I present these ”Sketches” in all proper fear and humility, to my Canadian public, hoping that the phases of colonial life they endeavor to portray will be recognized as not altogether unfamiliar. Some of them are true, others have been written through the medium of Fancy, which can find and inhabit as large a field in Canada as elsewhere; for, to my mind, there is no country, no town, no village, as there is no nation, no cla.s.s of society, nor individual existence, that has not its own deep and peculiar significance, its own unique and personal characteristics that distinguish it from the rest of the world.

SERa.n.u.s.

Crowded Out.

I am n.o.body. I am living in a London lodging-house. My room is up three pair of stairs. I have come to London to sell or to part with in some manner an opera, a comedy, a volume of verse, songs, sketches, stories.

I compose as well as write. I am ambitious. For the sake of another, one other, I am ambitious. For myself it does not matter. If n.o.body will discover me I must discover myself. I must demand recognition, I must wrest attention, they are my due. I look from my window over the smoky roofs of London. What will it do for me, this great cold city? It shall hear me, it shall pause for a moment, for a day, for a year. I will make it to listen to me, to look at me. I have left a continent behind, I have crossed a great water; I have incurred dangers, trials of all kinds; I have grown pale and thin with labor and the midnight oil; I have starved, and watched the dawn break starving; I have prayed on my stubborn knees for death and I have prayed on my stubborn knees for life--all that I might reach London, London that has killed so many of my brothers, London the cold, London the blind, London the cruel! I am here at last. I am here to be tested, to be proved, to be worn proudly, as a favorite and costly jewel is worn, or to be flung aside scornfully or dropped stealthily to--the devil! And I love it so this great London!

I am ready to swear no one ever loved it so before! The smokier it is, the dirtier, the dingier, the better. The oftener it rains the better.

The more whimsical it is, the more fickle, the more credulous, the more self-sufficient, the more self-existent, the better. Nothing that it can do, nothing that it can be, can change my love for it, great cruel London!

But to be cruel to _me_, to be fickle to _me_, to be deaf to _me_, to be blind to _me_! Would I change then? I might. As yet it does not know me. I pa.s.s through its streets, touching here a bit of old black wall, picking there an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me.

It is the mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day I shall possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant tread of the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am n.o.body. I am crowded out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in England, of being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam strike the glory along the green. I know it is an English sky above me, all change, all mutability. No steady cloudless sphere of blue but ever-varying glories of white piled cloud against the gray. Listen to this. I saw a primrose--the first I had ever seen--in the hedge. They said ”Pick it.” But I did not. I, who had written there years ago,--

I never pulled a primrose, I, But could I know that there may lie E'en now some small or hidden seed, Within, below, an English mead, Waiting for sun and rain to make A flower of it for my poor sake, I then could wait till winds should tell, For me there swayed or swung a bell, Or reared a banner, peered a star, Or curved a cup in woods afar.

I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The s.h.i.+mmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy green, the singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country; the blackened churches, the gra.s.s-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. G.o.d! do I not love it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself, I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever written about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from my narrow window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on Glas...o...b..ry, on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck.

How it would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into gold?--I come back from the window and sit at the square centre table.

It is rickety and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.

One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp gla.s.s is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though I can't feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?

I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into some bottomless pit or gulf.

Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear, very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I could go to sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten.

But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres, I will see the managers, I will even tell them about myself and about Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know Hortense. They will laugh, they will say ”You fool.” And I shall be helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never listen to me, though I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am n.o.body. And Hortense, the child with the royal air, Hortense, with her imperial brow and her hair rolled over its cus.h.i.+on, Hortense, the _Chatelaine_ of _Beau Sejour_, the delicate, haughty, pale and impa.s.sioned daughter of a n.o.ble house, that Hortense, my Hortense, is n.o.body!

Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know about Hortense or about _Beau Sejour_? If they ask me, I shall say--oh!

proudly--not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a great water dwells such a maiden in such a _chateau_. There by the side of a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer, hard, hard frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its impenetrable pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the _chateau_, long and white and straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the boatmen singing--

Descendez a l'ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.