CHAPTER IV--A MAN AND THE ABYSS
"I say, can you let a lodging?"
These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and
elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-
house down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.
"Oh yus," she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not
approximating the standard of affluence required by her house.
I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea
in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to
pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out
of my pocket. The expected result was produced.
"Yus, sir," she at once volunteered; "I 'ave nice lodgin's you'd
likely tyke a fancy to. Back from a voyage, sir?"
"How much for a room?" I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.
She looked me up and down with frank surprise. "I don't let rooms,
not to my reg'lar lodgers, much less casuals."
"Then I'll have to look along a bit," I said, with marked
disappointment.
But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen. "I can let you
have a nice bed in with two hother men," she urged. "Good,
respectable men, an' steady."
"But I don't want to sleep with two other men," I objected.
"You don't 'ave to. There's three beds in the room, an' hit's not a
very small room."
"How much?" I demanded.
"'Arf a crown a week, two an' six, to a regular lodger. You'll
fancy the men, I'm sure. One works in the ware'ouse, an' 'e's been
with me two years now. An' the hother's bin with me six--six years,
sir, an' two months comin' nex' Saturday. 'E's a scene-shifter,"
she went on. "A steady, respectable man, never missin' a night's
work in the time 'e's bin with me. An' 'e likes the 'ouse; 'e says
as it's the best 'e can do in the w'y of lodgin's. I board 'im, an'
the hother lodgers too."
"I suppose he's saving money right along," I insinuated innocently.
"Bless you, no! Nor can 'e do as well helsewhere with 'is money."
And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and
unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a
steady and reliable man, never missing a night's work, frugal and
honest, lodging in one room with two other men, paying two dollars
and a half per month for it, and out of his experience adjudging it
to be the best he could do! And here was I, on the strength of the
ten shillings in my pocket, able to enter in with my rags and take
up my bed with him. The human soul is a lonely thing, but it must
be very lonely sometimes when there are three beds to a room, and
casuals with ten shillings are admitted.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"Thirteen years, sir; an' don't you think you'll fancy the lodgin'?"
The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small
kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also
boarders. When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had
she let up once throughout the conversation. Undoubtedly she was a
busy woman. "Up at half-past five," "to bed the last thing at
night," "workin' fit ter drop," thirteen years of it, and for
reward, grey hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly
figure, unending toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced
on an alley ten feet between the walls, and a waterside environment
that was ugly and sickening, to say the least.
"You'll be hin hagain to 'ave a look?" she questioned wistfully, as
I went out of the door.
And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper
truth underlying that very wise old maxim: "Virtue is its own
reward."
I went back to her. "Have you ever taken a vacation?" I asked.
"Vycytion!"
"A trip to the country for a couple of days, fresh air, a day off,
you know, a rest."
"Lor' lumme!" she laughed, for the first time stopping from her
work. "A vycytion, eh? for the likes o' me? Just fancy, now!--Mind
yer feet!"--this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the
rotten threshold.
Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring
disconsolately at the muddy water. A fireman's cap was pulled down
across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered
unmistakably of the sea.
"Hello, mate," I greeted him, sparring for a beginning. "Can you
tell me the way to Wapping?"
"Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?" he countered, fixing my
nationality on the instant.
And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a
public-house and a couple of pints of "arf an' arf." This led to
closer intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling's
worth of coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a
bed, and sixpence for more arf an' arf, he generously proposed that
we drink up the whole shilling.
"My mate, 'e cut up rough las' night," he explained. "An' the
bobbies got 'm, so you can bunk in wi' me. Wotcher say?"
I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole
shilling's worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in
a miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was. And that
in one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower-
class London workman, my later experience substantiates.
He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him.
As a child, his home was the streets and the docks. He had never
learned to read, and had never felt the need for it--a vain and
useless accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station
in life.
He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all
crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular
food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never
went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his
own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks,
a trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer,
and then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.
And in the course of this he had also hammered out a philosophy of
life, an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical
and sensible one from his point of view. When I asked him what he
lived for, he immediately answered, "Booze." A voyage to sea (for a
man must live and get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and
the big drunk at the end. After that, haphazard little drunks,
sponged in the "pubs" from mates with a few coppers left, like
myself, and when sponging was played out another trip to sea and a
repetition of the beastly cycle.
"But women," I suggested, when he had finished proclaiming booze the
sole end of existence.
"Wimmen!" He thumped his pot upon the bar and orated eloquently.
"Wimmen is a thing my edication 'as learnt me t' let alone. It
don't pay, matey; it don't pay. Wot's a man like me want o' wimmen,
eh? jest you tell me. There was my mar, she was enough, a-bangin'
the kids about an' makin' the ole man mis'rable when 'e come 'ome,
w'ich was seldom, I grant. An' fer w'y? Becos o' mar! She didn't
make 'is 'ome 'appy, that was w'y. Then, there's the other wimmen,
'ow do they treat a pore stoker with a few shillin's in 'is
trouseys? A good drunk is wot 'e's got in 'is pockits, a good long
drunk, an' the wimmen skin 'im out of his money so quick 'e ain't
'ad 'ardly a glass. I know. I've 'ad my fling, an' I know wot's
wot. An' I tell you, where's wimmen is trouble--screechin' an'
carryin' on, fightin', cuttin', bobbies, magistrates, an' a month's
'ard labour back of it all, an' no pay-day when you come out."
"But a wife and children," I insisted. "A home of your own, and all
that. Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on
your knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when
she lays the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they
go to bed, and the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of
where you've been and what you've seen, and of her and all the
little happenings at home while you've been away, and--"
"Garn!" he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder.
"Wot's yer game, eh? A missus kissin' an' kids clim'in', an' kettle
singin', all on four poun' ten a month w'en you 'ave a ship, an'
four nothin' w'en you 'aven't. I'll tell you wot I'd get on four
poun' ten--a missus rowin', kids squallin', no coal t' make the
kettle sing, an' the kettle up the spout, that's wot I'd get.
Enough t' make a bloke bloomin' well glad to be back t' sea. A
missus! Wot for? T' make you mis'rable? Kids? Jest take my
counsel, matey, an' don't 'ave 'em. Look at me! I can 'ave my beer
w'en I like, an' no blessed missus an' kids a-crying for bread. I'm
'appy, I am, with my beer an' mates like you, an' a good ship
comin', an' another trip to sea. So I say, let's 'ave another pint.
Arf an' arf's good enough for me."
Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of two-
and-twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of
life and the underlying economic reason for it. Home life he had
never known. The word "home" aroused nothing but unpleasant
associations. In the low wages of his father, and of other men in
the same walk in life, he found sufficient reason for branding wife
and children as encumbrances and causes of masculine misery. An
unconscious hedonist, utterly unmoral and materialistic, he sought
the greatest possible happiness for himself, and found it in drink.
A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker's
work; the gutter or the workhouse; and the end--he saw it all as
clearly as I, but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of
his birth, all the forces of his environment had tended to harden
him, and he viewed his wretched, inevitable future with a
callousness and unconcern I could not shake.
And yet he was not a bad man. He was not inherently vicious and
brutal. He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique.
His eyes were blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart.
And there was a laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind. The
brow and general features were good, the mouth and lips sweet,
though already developing a harsh twist. The chin was weak, but not
too weak; I have seen men sitting in the high places with weaker.
His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect
neck that I was not surprised by his body that night when he
stripped for bed. I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and
training quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have
never seen one who stripped to better advantage than this young sot
of two-and-twenty, this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or
five short years, and to pass hence without posterity to receive the
splendid heritage it was his to bequeath.
It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to
confess that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in
London Town. Just as the scene-shifter was happier in making both
ends meet in a room shared with two other men, than he would have
been had he packed a feeble family along with a couple of men into a
cheaper room, and failed in making both ends meet.
And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it
is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the
stones by the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the
social fabric, while all the forces of society drive them downward
till they perish. At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble,
besotted, and imbecile. If they reproduce, the life is so cheap
that perforce it perishes of itself. The work of the world goes on
above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they
able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need them. There
are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep slope above,
and struggling frantically to slide no more.
In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and
decade after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous
strong life, that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by
the third generation. Competent authorities aver that the London
workman whose parents and grand-parents were born in London is so
remarkable a specimen that he is rarely found.
Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor, and the residuum which
compose the "submerged tenth," constitute 71 per cent, of the
population of London. Which is to say that last year, and
yesterday, and to-day, at this very moment, 450,000 of these
creatures are dying miserably at the bottom of the social pit called
"London." As to how they die, I shall take an instance from this
morning's paper.
SELF-NEGLECT
Yesterday Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquest at Shoreditch,
respecting the death of Elizabeth Crews, aged 77 years, of 32 East
Street, Holborn, who died on Wednesday last. Alice Mathieson stated
that she was landlady of the house where deceased lived. Witness
last saw her alive on the previous Monday. She lived quite alone.
Mr. Francis Birch, relieving officer for the Holborn district,
stated that deceased had occupied the room in question for thirty-
five years. When witness was called, on the 1st, he found the old
woman in a terrible state, and the ambulance and coachman had to be
disinfected after the removal. Dr. Chase Fennell said death was due
to blood-poisoning from bed-sores, due to self-neglect and filthy
surroundings, and the jury returned a verdict to that effect.
The most startling thing about this little incident of a woman's
death is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon
it and rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years
of age should die of SELF-NEGLECT is the most optimistic way
possible of looking at it. It was the old dead woman's fault that
she died, and having located the responsibility, society goes
contentedly on about its own affairs.
Of the "submerged tenth" Mr. Pigou has said: "Either through lack
of bodily strength, or of intelligence, or of fibre, or of all
three, they are inefficient or unwilling workers, and consequently
unable to support themselves . . . They are often so degraded in
intellect as to be incapable of distinguishing their right from
their left hand, or of recognising the numbers of their own houses;
their bodies are feeble and without stamina, their affections are
warped, and they scarcely know what family life means."
Four hundred and fifty thousand is a whole lot of people. The young
fireman was only one, and it took him some time to say his little
say. I should not like to hear them all talk at once. I wonder if
God hears them?
