CHAPTER III--MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS
From an East London standpoint, the room I rented for six shillings,
or a dollar and a half, per week, was a most comfortable affair.
From the American standpoint, on the other hand, it was rudely
furnished, uncomfortable, and small. By the time I had added an
ordinary typewriter table to its scanty furnishing, I was hard put
to turn around; at the best, I managed to navigate it by a sort of
vermicular progression requiring great dexterity and presence of
mind.
Having settled myself, or my property rather, I put on my knockabout
clothes and went out for a walk. Lodgings being fresh in my mind, I
began to look them up, bearing in mind the hypothesis that I was a
poor young man with a wife and large family.
My first discovery was that empty houses were few and far between--
so far between, in fact, that though I walked miles in irregular
circles over a large area, I still remained between. Not one empty
house could I find--a conclusive proof that the district was
"saturated."
It being plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent
no houses at all in this most undesirable region, I next looked for
rooms, unfurnished rooms, in which I could store my wife and babies
and chattels. There were not many, but I found them, usually in the
singular, for one appears to be considered sufficient for a poor
man's family in which to cook and eat and sleep. When I asked for
two rooms, the sublettees looked at me very much in the manner, I
imagine, that a certain personage looked at Oliver Twist when he
asked for more.
Not only was one room deemed sufficient for a poor man and his
family, but I learned that many families, occupying single rooms,
had so much space to spare as to be able to take in a lodger or two.
When such rooms can be rented for from three to six shillings per
week, it is a fair conclusion that a lodger with references should
obtain floor space for, say, from eightpence to a shilling. He may
even be able to board with the sublettees for a few shillings more.
This, however, I failed to inquire into--a reprehensible error on my
part, considering that I was working on the basis of a hypothetical
family.
Not only did the houses I investigated have no bath-tubs, but I
learned that there were no bath-tubs in all the thousands of houses
I had seen. Under the circumstances, with my wife and babies and a
couple of lodgers suffering from the too great spaciousness of one
room, taking a bath in a tin wash-basin would be an unfeasible
undertaking. But, it seems, the compensation comes in with the
saving of soap, so all's well, and God's still in heaven.
However, I rented no rooms, but returned to my own Johnny Upright's
street. What with my wife, and babies, and lodgers, and the various
cubby-holes into which I had fitted them, my mind's eye had become
narrow-angled, and I could not quite take in all of my own room at
once. The immensity of it was awe-inspiring. Could this be the
room I had rented for six shillings a week? Impossible! But my
landlady, knocking at the door to learn if I were comfortable,
dispelled my doubts.
"Oh yes, sir," she said, in reply to a question. "This street is
the very last. All the other streets were like this eight or ten
years ago, and all the people were very respectable. But the others
have driven our kind out. Those in this street are the only ones
left. It's shocking, sir!"
And then she explained the process of saturation, by which the
rental value of a neighbourhood went up, while its tone went down.
"You see, sir, our kind are not used to crowding in the way the
others do. We need more room. The others, the foreigners and
lower-class people, can get five and six families into this house,
where we only get one. So they can pay more rent for the house than
we can afford. It IS shocking, sir; and just to think, only a few
years ago all this neighbourhood was just as nice as it could be."
I looked at her. Here was a woman, of the finest grade of the
English working-class, with numerous evidences of refinement, being
slowly engulfed by that noisome and rotten tide of humanity which
the powers that be are pouring eastward out of London Town. Bank,
factory, hotel, and office building must go up, and the city poor
folk are a nomadic breed; so they migrate eastward, wave upon wave,
saturating and degrading neighbourhood by neighbourhood, driving the
better class of workers before them to pioneer, on the rim of the
city, or dragging them down, if not in the first generation, surely
in the second and third.
It is only a question of months when Johnny Upright's street must
go. He realises it himself.
"In a couple of years," he says, "my lease expires. My landlord is
one of our kind. He has not put up the rent on any of his houses
here, and this has enabled us to stay. But any day he may sell, or
any day he may die, which is the same thing so far as we are
concerned. The house is bought by a money breeder, who builds a
sweat shop on the patch of ground at the rear where my grapevine is,
adds to the house, and rents it a room to a family. There you are,
and Johnny Upright's gone!"
And truly I saw Johnny Upright, and his good wife and fair
daughters, and frowzy slavey, like so many ghosts flitting eastward
through the gloom, the monster city roaring at their heels.
But Johnny Upright is not alone in his flitting. Far, far out, on
the fringe of the city, live the small business men, little
managers, and successful clerks. They dwell in cottages and semi-
detached villas, with bits of flower garden, and elbow room, and
breathing space. They inflate themselves with pride, and throw out
their chests when they contemplate the Abyss from which they have
escaped, and they thank God that they are not as other men. And lo!
down upon them comes Johnny Upright and the monster city at his
heels. Tenements spring up like magic, gardens are built upon,
villas are divided and subdivided into many dwellings, and the black
night of London settles down in a greasy pall.
