Out and About London - Thomas Burke

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seamen. Awhile back, before this monstrous jest of war, there was a certain raw gaiety about the place brought thither by these same blond vikings; but, since the frenetic agitations of certain timorous people against "all aliens" – as though none but an alien can be a spy – these men are not now allowed to land from their boats, and Shadwell is the poorer of a touch of colour. One might often meet them and fraternize with them in the coffee-bars and beer-shops (there are few "public-houses" in these streets), and hear their view of things. Bearded giants they were, absurdly out of the picture in these tiny, sawdusted rooms, against the hideous bedizenment of the London house of refreshment. They would engage in rich, confused, interminable conversations, using a language which, to the stranger, sounded like a medley of hiccoughs and snorts; and there would be vehement arguments and a large fanning of the breeze. In the upper rooms, on Saturday evenings, one might have singing and dancing to a cracked piano and a superannuated banjo, and there the girls of the quarter would appear, and would do themselves well on seafarers' hospitality.

      But the free-and-easy atmosphere is gone. You enter any bar and are at once under a cloud. Suspicion has been bred in all these docks men by the cheap Press. The patriotic stevedores regard you as a disguised alien. The landlord wonders whether you are one of those blasted newspaper men or are from the Yard. The visitors to the bars are in every case insipid; none of the ripe character that once lit such places to sudden life. Abrupt acquaintance and casual conversation are not to be had. The beer is filthy. The good Burton is gone, and in its place you have a foul concoction which has not the mellowing effect of honest British beer or the exhilarating effect of the light continental brews. Shadwell High Street is now a dirty lane of poor lodging-houses, foul courts, waste tracts of land, mission halls exuding a stale air of diseased hospitality, and those nondescript establishments, ships' chandlers, with their miscellanies of apparently useless lumber, stored in such a heap that it would seem impossible to find any article immediately required. In short, social life here is as it should be, according to the unwearied in war-work.

      Still, there are some adorable morsels of domestic architecture to be found up narrow alleys: old cottages and tumbling buildings, mellowed by centuries of association with many weathers and with men and ships from the green and golden seas that lie beyond the muddy waters of London River; and these supply one touch of animation to the prevailing moribundity.

      Very different are the Millwall Docks. Little material beauty here, but something much better – good company, and plenty of it. The docks lie at the south of the Isle of Dogs, amid a flat stretch of dreary warehouses and factories, and you approach them by a long curving street of poor cottages and "general" shops. The island is a place of harsh discords, for Cubitt's works are established here, and the ring of hammers rises above the roar of furnaces, and the vociferous life of the canals above the scream of the siren and the moan of the hooter, and the concerted voices of the island seem to cry the accumulated agony of the East End. Great arc lights, suspended from above, when cargoes are being unloaded by night, fling into sudden illumination or shadow the faces and figures of the groups of workers as they stagger up the gangways with their loads, and lend to the whole scene an air of theatrical illusion. In the bars you find sweaty engineers and grimy stokers. Here is a prolific field of character; mostly British, though a few Lascars may be found, drinking solitary drinks or parading the streets with their customary air of bewilderment. Here are nut-brown toilers of the sea, whose complexions suggest that they have been trapped by that advertiser in the popular Press who offers his toilet wares with the oracular pronouncement that "Handsome Men Are Slightly Sunburnt." Here are men who have circled the seven seas. Here, calm and taciturn, is a man who knows Pitcairn Islanders to speak to; who produces from one pocket a carved ivory god, presented to him by some native of Java, and from the other Old Timothy's One-Horse Snip for the Big Race.

      Under the meagre daylight and the opulent shadows of these docks you may drink beer and listen to casual chit-chat that carries you round the world and into magical hidden places, and brings you back with a jerk to the Isle of Dogs.

      "Yerce. Two bob a pound the 'Ome an' Colonial was arstin' the missus for the stuff. I soon went round an' told 'em where they could put it. Well, 'sI was sayin', after we left Rangoon, we – "

      The land in this district consists, for the most part, of oozing marsh, so that, when a gale sweeps from the mouth of the river, it reaches the island with unexpended force. Then the sky seems to scream in harmony with the rattling windows. Saloon signs swing grotesquely. The river assumes a steely hue, heaving and rushing, sucking against staples, wharves and barges, and rising in ineffectual splashes against the gates of the docks, until you seek the public bar of the "Dog and Thunderstorm" as a sanctuary. There, amid the babble of pewter and glass and the punctuation of the cash register, you forget any London gale in listening to stories of typhoons, cyclones, and other freaks of the elements common to the Pacific and the meeting of the waters round the Horn.

      Many hours have I squandered on the ridiculous bridge of the Isle of Dogs, in sunlight or twilight, grey mist or velvet darkness, building my dreams about the boats as they dropped downstream to the oceans of the world and their ports with honey-syllabled names – Swatow, Rangoon, Manila, Mozambique, Amoy – returning in normal times, with fantastic cargoes of cornelian and jade, malachite and onyx, fine shapes of ivory and coral, sharp spices of betel-nut and bhang, and a secret tin or two of li-un – perhaps not returning at all. There I would stand, giving to each ship some name and destination born of my own fancy, and endowing it with a marvellous meed of adventure.

      It is an exciting experience for the landsman Cockney, strolling the streets about the docks, to rub shoulders with other little Cockneys, in blue serge and cotton scarves, who have accepted the non-committal invitation offered by the funnel and the rigging over the walls of Limehouse Basin. One remembers the story of the pale curate at the church concert, at which one of the entertainers had sung a setting of Kipling's "Rolling Down to Rio." "Ah, God!" he said, wringing his thin hands, "that's what I often feel like… Rolling down to Rio." And in these streets one meets insignificant little men who have done it; who have rolled down to Rio and gone back to Mandalay, and seen the dawn come up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay.

      And I am proud to have nodding acquaintance with them. I am glad they have drunk beer with me. I am glad I have clicked the chopsticks in Limehouse Causeway with the yellow boys who can talk of Canton and Siam and North Borneo and San Francisco. I am glad I have salaamed noble men of India at the Asiatics' Home, and heard their stories of odourous villages in the hills and of the seas about India, and of strange islands which mere Cockneys pick out on the map with an uncertain forefinger – Andamans, Nicobars, Solomons, and so forth. I am glad from having met men who know Java as I know London; who know the best places in Tokio for tea and the most picturesque spots in Formosa; who can direct me to a good hotel in Singapore, should I ever go there, and who know where Irish whisky can be bought in Sarawak. Why study guidebooks, or consult with the omniscient Mr. Cook, when you may find about the great ornamental gates of the docks of London natives of all corners of the world who can provide you with a hundred exclusive tips which will make smooth the traveller's way over every obstacle or untoward incident? Indeed, why travel at all, when you may travel by proxy; when, by hanging round the docks of London, you may travel, on the lips of these men, through jungle, ocean, white town, palm grove, desert island, and suffer all the sharp sensations of standing silent upon a peak in Darien, the while you are taking heartening draughts of mild and bitter in the saloon bar of the "Star of the East"?

      CHINATOWN REVISITED

      "Chinatown, my Chinatown, where the lights are low" – a fragment of a music-hall song in praise of Chinatown which sticks ironically in my memory. The fact that the lights are low applies at the time of writing to the whole of London; and as for the word "Chinatown," which once carried a perfume of delight, it is now empty of meaning save as indicating a district of London where Chinamen live. To-day Limehouse is without salt or savour; flat and unprofitable; and of all that it once held of colour and mystery and the macabre, one must write in the past tense. The missionaries and the Defence of the Realm Act have together stripped it of all that furtive adventure that formerly held such lure for the Westerner.

      It was in 1917 that I returned to it, after an absence of some years. In that year I received an invitation that is rightly accepted as a compliment: I was asked by Alvin Langdon Coburn to meet him at his

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