Part 18 (1/2)
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 a.s.sociations 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 b.u.t.terflies.
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 quant.i.ties. 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 bra.s.sy, 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 carca.s.s, and the decaying refuse in every gutter, and you will understand why I always smoke cigars in Spitalfields. In these cafes 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, s.h.i.+fty-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.
It was in these streets that I first met that giant of letters, Mr. W.
G. Waters, better known to the newspaper public as ”Spring Onions,” but unfortunately I did not meet him in his gay days, but in his second period, his regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a fearsome rival in the subtle art of Poesy. I stood him a cup of cocoa--for you know, if you read your newspaper, that Spring was a teetotaller. He signed the pledge, at the request of Sir John d.i.c.kinson, then magistrate at Thames Police Court, in 1898, and it was his proud boast that he had kept it ever since. He was then seventy-nine. His father died of drink at thirty-seven, and Dean Farrar once told Spring that his case was excusable, since it was hereditary. But, although Spring went to prison at the age of thirteen for drunkenness, and has ”been in” thirty-nine times, he didn't die at thirty-seven. I wonder what the moral is? His happiest days, he a.s.sured me, were spent in old Clerkenwell Prison, now Clerkenwell Post Office, and on one occasion, as he was the only prisoner who could read, he was permitted to entertain his companions by extracts from _Good Words_, without much effect, he added, as most of them are in and out even now. One important factor in the making of his grand resolution was that a girl he knew in Stepney, who was so far gone that even the Court missionary had given her up, came to him one Christmastime. She was in the depths of misery and hunger.
”Spring,” she said, ”give me a job!”
So Spring gave her the job of cleaning out his one room, for which she was to receive half a crown. She obeyed him; and when he returned, and looked under the floor where he stored his savings from the sale of his poems (nearly seven pounds) they also had been cleaned.
That settled it. Spring decided to cut all his acquaintances, but he could only do that successfully by some very public step. So he went to Sir John d.i.c.kinson and signed the pledge in his presence. Said he--
”And now, I find that after fifteen years of teetotalism, I write better poetry. Every time I feel I want a drink, I say to myself: 'Spring--sit down and write a poem!'”