POINT OF VIEW.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2568, 31 July 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

POINT OF VIEW.

(By Richard Whiteing, author of “No. 5, John Street,” ete.)It seems incredible. He lived in Walworth, and Walworth as only a stone’s throw from the Elephant and Oastle ;, he was a fish hawker of nearly full age, and yet he had never crossed the water into London but twice in his life. But it is a fact. The first time was for the Queen’s jubilee, when he was quite a child; the second time was for a boxing match in Whitechapel. But why not, if you coine to think of it? He had the full life of the south side at his very doors; and every quarter of mighty London is sufficient to itself. It is a network of boroughs, each caring as littlo for the other, except by way of hatred or contempt, as the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. Whitechapel, even for him, was no dass, oe being on the wrong side of •the water.

"Walworth gavo him all he wanted, the sense of home and birth-place, the huge Saturday and Sunday markets for the sale of his cured herring and haddock—above all the playhouse, and the music hall. The latter was his great delight, with its pit, stalls, and boxes, and especially its gallery that seemed to lose itsolf in the clouds. This gallery at three pence, was his touch for the off nights, when the pocket money ran low; the shil.ing stalls were for Saturdays and his gal. He never calledher his donah; and ho did not know the moaning of the word. The stalls were really a hit too classy for his taste—tradesmen who kept shops as distinct from pals as did it all in barrers —but the young woman liked the sense of being with the quality, and that was enough. It was a trifle awkward on such occasions, by reason of your being chi-hiked from the gallery. “What cheer, Tommy!” and io on. But you took no notice of it, aud e*at tight in your Sunday best. Wherever you sat it was all one, in this way —it was like being at a family party —“see what I mean?” You knew all the performers by sight, and, in a peculiar sense, oven by heart. You would call for your favorite song for the encore; and, if enough voices took up the call, you had your way. And, when .'it came, you knew the chorus almost better than the singer. The latter always left that part to the audience, and merely beat time, as it rolled up,, with the swell of. a hymn tune, from the floor to the highest slope of the gallery, as though straight , em its way to the blessed altodes.

“Primo!” my friend called it, and whatever you might bo doing in 'the way of amusements in other parts ;of town, “match it if you can.” -e : - . His favorite song was “Put mo amongst the gals,” and he generally had the whole house with him as soon as he started it. • < Yqu know that song, guv’nor. Them words come in at the end of every rerso. See? This is the wye it goes; whenever anybody offers a chap a treat well, lie always eez ! do as you like; it‘s a free countrybut when it comes to my turn put me amongst the gals.’ The more you hear it, the more you laugh. See the idea? It’s ripping, ’specially the last verse Tvo done time,’ ’» sez, as.you might, or anybody else might, for that matter; hut there’s a difference between one wye of doin’ it an’ another. ’Qlloways’s the ’ardest, so I hear, but next touch, I wouldn't mind goin’ there if I’d bo put amongst the gals. It’s a sort of °a skit on the "stiffryjetties”—dy’o foiler me? Lari rr -.l thought I should ha’ burst, when 1 struck it for the first timo.

“Then, there was a ticklin’ song, guv’-j-)or—not ‘Arry Lauder’s—Lor’ bless you —before ho was born or thought of. It’s a corker, but you can only hear it at sing-songs now. If I wa« a purfeshiona! I should try to bring it up again. This is 'off it goes : “I tickled—she giggled. She giggled—l tickled ; The more.; I tickled, the more she giggled— : Till at last she ivjid to me:— 'Don’t yer be ridiculous; Don’t yer’come and tickle us; Go an’ tickle somebody else, But don’t yer tickle me.’ ” “O'avs that for’igh—specially with a nice little bit o’ tnus:in. by your side, an' nudgin’ of yer all through the lastline. It’s my idee of enj’yment anyhow. I may be wrong.

"What I like is respectable entertainment—a place where you can take a young lady to. Nothin’ to 'make ’or reel ashamed of herself. Everything right-o. See what I mean?” He seemed so entirely satisfied with it that" I had scant hope of making him share my conviction that it was deplorable. • Yet of course it was. His ■environment, I could not but think, was a sort of education in bad taste; and I longed to give him an opportunity of reformation by taking him to a play at the "West End. .It was no easy .matter to induce him to cross the water. It was a new world, and, as I have already said, his own world was all sufficient to him. His curiosity, however, was excited by my glowing accounts of the style of the entertainment, and, at length, I had my reward in getting him under way for Piccadilly Cirefits. . .

He was in decent black, and I.need not say that this was quite- innocent •<»f pearlies, or of any other fantastic trapping associated with the style of his order in the fiction of the. day. "He looked just like nobody in particular, and I laid no hesitation in taking-seats for the upper circle commanding a. goojl view of the stage and the house. Ho seemed bored, I think, by the introductory music, chiefly from Chopin and Brahms: and he mistook it, in his

ignorance,, for .a .mere tuning up preparation for that lively air that, never came. But lie made no corn--plaint, lining, I fancy, overawed by the general style of the place, the carriages and motors setting down company at the doors, and the uniformed attendants directing the ticket holders to their places.

He timidly offered me an orange aa soon as we had taken our 6eats, but mercifully forbore' to attack the one he held in his other hand, on my declining- the delicacy with a smile- It was slightly embarrassing, too, to see him fix both arms * akimbo on the low railing in front. But when he found that he had this ail to himself he seemed to feol that there was something wrong, and lot them fall by his side.

His exclusive attention was soon fixed on the stalls, when he saw them rapidly filling with persons in evening dress ho asked, meekly, how much they had to pay for their places. I had barely satisfied his curiosity on this point wlien there came a new difficulty, in his rather too audible protest against the charge of sixpence for a programme. “A swindle, I call it, if you ask me.” He soon cooled down, however, under my admonitory stare. His attention was now diverted to two ladies and a gentleman who had entered a box. One of the former was a rather squat dowager whose position, I am bound to say, as she eanlc into her seat left little but head and bare shoulders visible above the balustrade. “Hullo, mother!” muttered my friend, all too audibly; “faint bedtime yet.” “What’s the matter?” “Can’t you see for yourself?” “I see a lady in evening dress.”

“Ob, she’s got ’em on tifter all. Thank you.” “Hush!” “Ought to havo six montlis,” he growled. And then, fortunately, before I could think 9f an answer, I was relieved by the riso of the curtain. He sat perfectly still throughout the entire act, and nover once withdrew his attention from the scene.

It was a piece of the ordinary West End description, and quite in the stlyc of the day. A lady of prepossessing appearance, whose husband, we were given to understand, was making his fortune abroad, was spending a liberal allowance in the society of a glittering circle. They were all engaged in doing nothing, with much energy, and apparently with the utmost intensity of conviction that, there was nothing else to do. •: They gambled a little and flirted a good -deal. The heroine herself scarcely made any secret of her interest in a young man of great elegance who seemed tp’.have no visible means of support. This, however, was. the common note. The one abiding suggestion from first to last was that their ways aud means came to them, like the manna to the Israelite L-of-old, as a free gift of Providence, and that their lives began exactly where those of other people usually left off. . The satisfaction of the pair seemed complete when, suddenly, the lady received the announcement of her husband’s unexpected return to England, and of his probable appearsnoo at any moment. The curtain . falls to rapturous applause on. her solitary figure in a .pose of anguish, with a crumpled telegram at her feet. My friend had not joined in this tribute of appreciation, and I looked at him with some misgiving.

“A strong situation,” I ventured to eay. “Situation you cal! it: there don’t seem to bo such a thing among the lot of Tm, ’Off do they got their livin’?” He looked round wearily. It was clearly not what ho had expected, but he kept that to himself. The girl who sold the playbills now approached with an offer of tea and coffee. “’Off much,” ho said, pointing to the tea, and to two diaphanous slices of bread and. butter nestling in the saucer. “Sixpence, dr P “Don’t you Ik: in a ’urry to make your fortunes,” he said genially—“ Not me.”

“There’s the bar,” 'I ventured, “if you would like —” but I now recollected that he was a teetotaller, like thousands of his class. “I could do wiv’ a bottle of ginger beer, if it was anything short of eighteen pence.” I changed the subject for fear of another scene, and presently there was a welcome diversion in the rise of the curtain. He snorted through the next act. It was certainty going from bad to worse, according to liis peculiar point of view. The husband and wife met, but not with'cordiality. The lady, in fact, signified the utmost politeness that he might well have stayed where ■he was. He was then rash enough to try to fold her in his arms, but she shook him off, as one visibly shuddering at his touch. He asked the reason of her coldness, and urged that his 'one thought was to make her the happiest woman in the world.

She blandly “assured him that his one thought was of making m.oney, and that he had entirely failed to understand, the needs'of her spiritual nature. He retired in a huff. Her friends, came in to condole with her, and left’ her in the company of the first favorite, who protested that nothing could save both of them and meet all the requirements of the higher life but an immediate elopement. At this- moment, the'husband, by an unfortunate accident, entered suddenly at the back, and saw enough to make him strike an attitude of utter dejection, as the curtain mercifully descended once more. This time it was succeeded by tho fire curtain—l thought

llyi-ith'ya.to - ilie: of the scene. : . • Ldookod at ray friend.' ‘‘Why can’t' lie wring ’is neck an’ ha’ done wiv’ it?” was all he said. Use is everything. At any other time, I daresay, I should have taken this as an entirely normal drama of human relations, as mirrowed on the fashionable stage. But tho manifest weariness, not to say hardly suppressed disgust of my companion convinced me that there was something wrong with it. I had to wait, however, to find it out. Light came at laHt when we had sat out an elopement, and a final scene in which the husband threw off the wife and, so to speak, whistled her down the wind to, her ignoble lure. And the something wrong was ,that the play was unreal. Amazingly clover, brilliant in dialogue, ingenious in construction —it was about, a sort of people that simply didn’t matter to either God or man. ~ .

My friend unfortunately took it quite seriously, as a picture of manners among tho upper classes, and. ho was quite compassionate about them as we walked together to tho Embankment to catch his tram. “There, guv’nor, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes! Talk about thorn sort o’ people doing things to ’elp us; why don’t none of us do something to -’elp them? That’s what's wanted. A few of us might lay our ’eads together, to give ’em a life. The old General”—(Booth understood) “might do wuss. Shockin’ that’s what I call it, fust to last. Who’d lia’ thought there was suph a set of doad ’uns livin’? Walkin’ abaht to save their funeral expenses, I s’pose. “ And as for them half-dressed people in front, why I never see my old mother like that —leastways since I was able to take notice . Tho ’ouso would ha’ been too ’ot to ’old ’em, oil our side, what with chi-hikin, an’ bad eggs.

“They got no work to do, that’s what’s the matter with ’em. If they was to turn out in purcession and come down our way —after people ’ad seen what I’ve seen— it ’ud be enough to melt a ’art of stone. “’Ere’s my tram; and thank yor kindly, guv’nor, but—never again.” I was glad of it: my plan of converting him had evidently failed, and I w»9 afraid he was going to convert me.