THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE OUTER CIRCLE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NIGHTS IN TOWN: A London Autobiography 
 
 OUT AND ABOUT : More Nights in Town 
 
 LONDON LAMPS 
 
 LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS 
 
 TWINKLETOES 
 
 THE SONG-BOOK OF OUONG LEE 
 
 WHISPERING WINDOWS : Tales of the Waterside
 
 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 RAMBLES IN REiMOTE LONDON 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS BURKE 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. i
 
 First published in igsi 
 
 {All rights reserved)
 
 TO 
 
 WINIFRED 
 
 PR: 
 
 hoi
 
 SUBURBIA 
 
 Where London sprawls across the gentle fields, 
 In those far fringes where the green begins — 
 Eltham and Enfield, Souihall and Wanstead Flat — 
 The landscape hut a loveless prospect yields ; 
 Wan grass, the last week's washing, a dead cat. 
 Factories, maisonettes and sardine-tins. 
 
 Yet even here the honeysuckle blows, 
 
 And the shy nightingale enchants the gloom ; 
 
 And sometimes I have seen the wild white rose 
 
 Around the hawthorn bough at Barnet Fair ; 
 
 A nd when the evening flowers with lights of home. 
 
 Each window seems a little silent prayer.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SETTING OUT 
 
 TOTTENHAM 
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 
 
 FORTIS GREEN 
 
 EDMONTON 
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING . 
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 
 
 WOOD GREEN 
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 
 
 HACKNEY .... 
 
 WALTHAMSTOW . 
 
 ILFORD .... 
 
 CROUCH END 
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 
 
 PACK 
 
 9 
 23 
 
 37 
 56 
 69 
 78 
 
 93 
 116 
 
 139 
 
 150 
 162 
 
 171 
 
 185 
 194 
 
 205
 
 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 SETTING OUT 
 
 THE shameful accident happened during 
 Armistice Week. I was lost in London. 
 I, whose virgin ears suffered their earliest 
 wooing from the bells of St, Mary-le-Bow, lost myself 
 in London. 
 
 On the second evening of that week, when the 
 excitement had over-reached itself to an anti-climax, 
 I boarded a motor 'bus. Its head-board was obscured 
 by a festoon of legs and skirts of joy-riding armis- 
 ticers, but I was careless of its destination. London 
 had capitulated to alien revellers, and I was glad 
 to join the refugees and escape towards the suburbs. 
 
 For the first twenty minutes I checked our route : 
 Oxford Street, Marble Arch, Praed Street, Maida 
 Vale, Kilburn, " The Crown," Cricklewood, Shoot-up 
 Hill. Then a sudden lurch brought four soldiers 
 and three girls against my tender spot, and I went 
 to the floor, and, for the space of many minutes, 
 saw nothing of London. After much battling, the 
 black legs and khaki legs were withdrawn by their 
 owners, and I was extricated. Then, across the new-
 
 10 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 lit night broke a cry, " All Change. Garage only ! " 
 With the others I slung myself over the front of the 
 'bus and dropped to the roadway. 
 
 " Where are we ? " I cried to the glooms. And 
 the glooms gave back : " Sherrick Green." " Sher- 
 rick Green," I mused. " Sherrick Green. Now 
 where in Middlesex or Hertfordshire is that ? And is 
 it on the Great Central, the Northern, the Midland 
 or on the North-Western ? And how the devil am 
 I to get back to town ? " 
 
 How far we had travelled during the minutes 
 that I lay prone I could not judge. My companions 
 of the journey had suddenly melted into the dark- 
 ness, and with them the 'bus ; but a few yards 
 distant some shrouded lights hinted at humanity. 
 They seemed to hang in the middle air. They 
 illuminated nothing of their surroundings, and threw 
 no beam. Like respectable citizens, they kept 
 themselves to themselves. I approached them, and 
 found that they were attached to a small shop 
 wherein sweets, tobacco, toys and newspapers were 
 hidden. I entered, bought a newspaper and some 
 cigarettes, and inquired for a back number of Sexton 
 Blake. While the good woman foraged for it I 
 made talk. 
 
 " Nice part round here — Sherrick Green. Haven't 
 been this way before." 
 
 " Yes," she rephed from the lower recesses of the 
 counter.
 
 SETTING OUT 11 
 
 " Nice little houses you've got here. Easy reach 
 of London, too. So convenient, and all that." 
 
 " London ? You talk as though we was miles 
 in the country. ... I got the week before last's, but 
 that ain't the one, is it ? " 
 
 " Oh, when I said London, I was thinking of 
 Charing Cross." 
 
 " Oh, Charing Cross, yes. . . , Ah, 'ere we are. 
 . . . ' The House Behind the Willows.' That's it, 
 ain't it ? " 
 
 " Thanks, yes. That's the one I missed. . . . Er — 
 if I keep straight on here, it won't take ten minutes 
 
 to — er " I struck a match and lit a cigarette, 
 
 and in the pause the information that I sought for 
 came pat. 
 
 " No, about ten minutes to Willesden. Straight 
 on." 
 
 I fled. Ten minutes to Willesden. I was in 
 London, then — at Sherrick Green, N.W. I stood 
 on the deserted pavement and burned with shame. 
 Sherrick Green, London ; and I had never heard of 
 it ! A corner of my own city, where men ate and 
 slept, and loved and hated ; where tradesmen built 
 bonny businesses ; where babies were born ; where 
 children went to school and grew into men and 
 women ; and I knew not of it. Other remote 
 suburbs I knew and loved. I had seen the lilac 
 bushes exterminated from Crofton Park. I was 
 about when the tramway was extended from Tooting
 
 12 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 to Hampton Court. I had watched the steady 
 surge of houses from Lewisham to Sidcup. I had 
 witnessed Croydon's absorption of Addiscombe. I 
 had seen Elthorne and Charlton brought into the 
 London Postal District, and Rippleside and Ching- 
 ford brought within a 'bus ride of Victoria. Yet 
 Sherrick Green I had cut. 
 
 I felt that I owed it amends, so I humbly moved 
 about its streets until I came to the domain of its 
 parent, Neasden. Walking thus, I had the sense 
 of visiting the city of a strange country. In Cheap- 
 side, in Fleet Street, Lothbury and Holborn I must 
 at some time or other have rubbed shoulders with 
 Sherrick Greeners, and have seen them as other men 
 who lived with me at Highgate. Yet here, in their 
 own territory, I saw them savagely themselves, 
 insular, prejudiced against the natives of other 
 countries who walked with them the streets of the 
 inner city. 
 
 I wondered how far my ignorance was shared by 
 other men not Sherrick Greeners. I remembered many 
 place-names, casually dismissed by those who did 
 not live there as " dormitories of London " — Fortis 
 Green, Bowes Park, Stroud Green, Whetstone, 
 Harringay, Rushey Green, Ponder's End, Cyprus ; 
 and then and there I decided that these little towns 
 must be celebrated. I would lock up ; gather tooth- 
 brush, comb and razor, and re-visit them ; make the 
 Grand Tour of the true heiit of London. I would
 
 SETTING OUT 13 
 
 see again these sweet-named Parks and Greens 
 whose air is fed by the dreams of youth and man ; 
 these scorned dormitories where high schemes are 
 laid, and where ambitions and aspirations of men 
 and women slumber in the seed until they are 
 brought to flower in the huckster-place of E.G. 
 or W. 
 
 Back in town I called at the Glub, where other 
 armisticers were gathered. 
 
 " Hullo, old chap. Where've you been ? " 
 " I've been to Sherrick Green," I replied, self- 
 consciously, as one might say " I am this moment 
 from Illyria." 
 
 " Sherrick Green ? Oh, in the country. You've 
 missed all the excitement then." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," I demanded solemnly, 
 " that you've lived all these years in London and 
 don't know Sherrick Green ? " 
 
 " Never heard of the place. Not ashamed to own 
 it, either. If Sherrick Green were worth knowing, 
 I should have heard of it. Where is it ? " 
 " It's in London. Near Willesden." 
 " Oh, one of those new suburbs that used to be 
 built overnight, I suppose." 
 
 " It is," I repHed. " It is one of those new suburbs 
 on old acres. And therefore it is a place that every 
 good Londoner, and every student of the human 
 heart, should visit. You go and stare at some crum- 
 bling pile made by some predatory prelate some
 
 14 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 five hundred years ago, and from your rubber- 
 necking you offer yourself some manufactured thrill. 
 It's all wrong The true thrill should come when 
 you look at the new suburb and its half-built roads 
 and houses, and remember that Mr. Wilkinson has 
 taken that little house which still wants windows 
 and is not yet connected to main drainage, and is 
 waiting to take his bride into it ; that there they 
 will begin their married life, and there will the young 
 Wilkinsons be born. We know the history of your 
 worm-eaten Gothic piles. Their tale is told ; their 
 course finished. Men have done with them. But 
 the potentialities of the history of that red-brick 
 villa in that clay-soil suburb are too vast for con- 
 templation. To ignore such places as these is to 
 mark yourself Philistine. Yes, Philistine to you, 
 sir. Good-night." 
 
 Elsewhere I found equal ignorance of those suburbs 
 to which trams, 'buses and trains go in their hun- 
 dreds all the day. It was clear that the only people 
 who knew them were 'bus drivers and the people 
 who lived there. A few had heard of Ladywell, 
 Harlesden, Brockley Tips, Parson's Green ; but 
 none had seen them, save one man who lived at 
 Brockley and who exceeded myself in disgust and 
 indignation at their insular ignorance. And when 
 I asked him if he had ever been to C3rprus he said 
 he could't afford these Mediterranean trips. When 
 I told him that hundreds of people crossed the Thames
 
 SETTING OUT 15 
 
 every night to their homes in Cyprus he was face- 
 tiously incredulous. 
 
 Motor 'buses carry these place-names to all parts 
 of London, and men pass through their railway 
 stations on the way out of London. But little of 
 their shape or character is heeded ; random flashes 
 of trim gardens and a steady flood of roofs are all 
 that the traveller sees. The stations are seldom 
 busy. It is not now fashionable for suburbs to 
 have railway stations. Have you not seen the 
 derelict stations of the inner suburbs — poor, towzled 
 affairs, lonely as wayside halts, but grimy, snivelly, 
 tatterdemalion brothers of the open-air halt ? All 
 trains seem to have forgotten them. Sometimes 
 you see the staff — or a portion of it — purposeless 
 officials, mooning about the vast platforms. These 
 take their tone from the station. Staff, fittings, 
 appointments, the very advertisement posters, are 
 flat and woolly. There stand these stations — 
 Wandsworth Road, Coborn Road, Globe Road, 
 Cambridge Heath, London Fields, Walworth Road, 
 Queen's Road, Borough Road, Camberwell Road, 
 Elephant and Castle, Loudoun Road, Queen's Park, 
 Haggerston, Gospel Oak, Spa Road, Tidal Basin, 
 Leman Street, Blackhorse Road, Barnsbury, Canon- 
 bury, Haydon's Road, Royal Oak, Woodgrange Park, 
 and the station that is, without prefix, named Park — 
 there they stand, frayed and forlorn, above or below 
 the main current of London traffic, out of the public
 
 16 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 ken ; the world forgetting, by the world forgot. 
 And the stations of the outer suburbs are in little 
 better case, save that excitement does visit them 
 between seven and ten in the morning and between 
 six and eight in the evening, when their natives go 
 forth and return. 
 
 Seldom does a stray tourist alight at Palmer's 
 Green, or Cranley Gardens, or Maryland Point as the 
 beginning of a walking tour. Even those who make 
 a point of boring you with tediously dilated stories 
 of the shrines of central London and of the " places 
 of interest " within a four-mile radius, ignore the 
 hundred venerable relics of the suburbs. Hampton 
 Court they know, and Richmond Palace and Eltham 
 Palace, But they never conduct parties to Anne 
 Boleyn's house, to Eastbury Manor, to Battersea 
 Rise House, to Morden College, to the Bishop of 
 Rochester's House or Bruce Castle. They would 
 consider it time ill-spent to ponder upon the trim 
 roads of Thornton Heath or the nervous streets 
 of Upton Park. They are of those who conceive a 
 suburb as a Euclidian arrangement of villas, each 
 bearing to its dull neighbour the equality of the 
 angle at A to that at B, or the resemblance of one 
 soldier on parade to another. To the uninformed eye 
 a regiment of soldiers shows uniformity, nothing 
 more. But behind each tunic is a passionate per- 
 sonality ; the angle at A is bursting with suppressed 
 A-ness. I have never yet in my wanderings met a
 
 SETTING OUT 17 
 
 truly dull man in the suburbs. From the most 
 amorphous material bits of bright life will break out, 
 if the sympathetic agent be employed. Plain men 
 will twitch a curtain and discover to you a hall of 
 wonder whose existence they themselves have well- 
 nigh, but not wholly, smothered. I have had great 
 joy of borough councillors in Harringay ; have met 
 kindred minds in ironmongers at Bowes Park ; 
 policemen of Rushey Green have discoursed to me on 
 the beauty of the dawn, as it comes up like thunder 
 from the flats of Kent ; and a bookmaker of Finchley 
 has rejoiced me by an admiration of James Sant's 
 Soul's Awakening. Browning wanted " to know a 
 butcher paints " : I have met one who does. I 
 met a journeyman baker who wished to discuss the 
 atomic theory ; and I once knew a landlord at 
 Highgate who wanted to accompany Shackleton on 
 his last voyage. Dull men I have met in Pall Mall 
 clubs, and in literary and art centres ; but a dull 
 shop-keeper with a one-man business in the suburbs 
 is rare. 
 
 But I was speaking of the deplorable lack of 
 communication between suburbs. A Manchester man 
 is just a Manchester man. But the Londoner from 
 Kilburn is a Kilburn man, who smiles wanly when 
 you speak of Walthamstow, He does not hate the 
 Walthamstowite as the Yorkshireman hates the 
 Lancashire lad. He just ignores him. London is 
 no longer a city ; it is an assembly of camps, whose 
 
 2
 
 18 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 members ask nothing of their neighbours. Stroud 
 Green knows nothing of the ways and thoughts of 
 Elegant Eltham, and cares less. East Sheen is deaf 
 to the wailings of Clissold Park. Crime in one camp 
 may draw the languid attention of camps far removed, 
 but nothing short of this can awaken interest. 
 
 Men of London will buy and read the Manchester 
 Guardian, the Birmingham Post and the Glasgow 
 Herald, but I never heard of a Whetstonian who read 
 the Sidcup Times or a Raynes Parker who " took in " 
 the Hornsey Journal. To these suburban organs is 
 given the facetious contempt that is given to the 
 suburb itself ; yet, through them, the music of 
 humanity surges more fully than through any metro- 
 politan organ pre-occupied with the universal. The 
 latter tells you only of the death of a Duchess, 
 of a speech by Lloyd George, of the marriage of a 
 prince : events that arouse neither pity nor terror ; 
 but these more definite sheets have tales for you to 
 move the heart to those emotions that at once ennoble 
 and abase us. As for him who says that his local 
 paper occupies itself with recording the trivial, I 
 have no patience with him. Awkward adolescent 
 towns the suburbs may be, but they are mighty 
 precocious adolescents. I take at random the current 
 issue of the voice of my own northern suburb. 
 Listen : 
 
 Presentation to Mr. Yapp ; Forty Years' Servict at the 
 Works. . . . Pretty Wedding at St. Andrew's. . . . Child
 
 SETTING OUT 19 
 
 Falls from Window. . . . Councillor Hinks on Trashy Books 
 in the Public Library. . . . Threatentd Rise in Rates ; Spirited 
 Protest by Councillor Brighteye. . . . Runaivay Horse in the 
 High Road ; Widow's Stall Wrscked. . . . Mr. Simp's 
 Lecture on Lake Lucerne. 
 
 Trivial, says my gentleman ! Why, the whole 
 paper throbs. It is alive. Turn to the back page, 
 to the advertisement columns. Here again is the 
 beat of life ; very insistent in that column which the 
 editor crudely heads " For Sale and Exchange," 
 and which I have named " All Souls' Parade." 
 Through that column Peeping Toms may watch the 
 procession of the souls of their borough, fluttering 
 under their gauze of anonymity. All the lofty ambi- 
 tions and the grievous woes of our streets are adum- 
 brated here, and the contemplative may brood 
 upon the solid body of anguish or delight that lies 
 behind. Thus, what accumulation of unfruitful 
 endeavour, precipitating him to despair, led Box 340 
 to insert the following heart-cry at a cost of two 
 shillings and sixpence : 
 
 " Cockerel, three pullets, two laying hens. Would exchange 
 for gramophone records." 
 
 It is followed by an appeal that makes uncomfort- 
 able suggestions to the imagination : 
 
 " Wanted coffee stall, portable clotlies copper (10 gall.) 
 and kitchen table." 
 
 Happier in tone is the next. One sees the whilom 
 invalid arising from his suburban couch and trotting
 
 20 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 to his back-garden, ready to throw a match with 
 Adam in the primal pastime of man : 
 
 " Recipe for home-made remedy for indigestion. Adver- 
 tiser cured himself. Would exchange for gardening imple- 
 ments." 
 
 A curious apphcation follows from an individual 
 who seems cursed with hesitation in great moments : 
 
 " Allotment half required. Would share tools and seeds." 
 
 It would seem idle to reply to that advertisement. 
 By the tinie the word reaches him he may have made 
 up his mind that he does not want an allotment. 
 At present he only half-requires it, and may be wait- 
 ing for a sign to drive him one way or the other. 
 Or has the printer made a slip ? Perhaps, adopting 
 the colloquial manner that seems to be the present 
 fashion in advertising, he really wrote " Allotment 
 not 'arf required " in a spirit of flagrant enthusiasm. 
 This is one of the hundred enigmas that confront 
 you on All Souls' Parade. 
 
 Surely those idle minds that seriously debate 
 the question " Are the Suburbs Soulless ? " cannot 
 have read their local papers. I have great delight 
 of local papers. Tastes in bedside books are as 
 sharply varied as tastes in tobaccos and perfumes. 
 For the half-hour before sleep some choose the 
 exuberance of the detective story ; some the shifting 
 emotions of the picaresque novel ; others, the warm
 
 SETTING OUT 21 
 
 serenity of Montaigne, Lamb or Burton. But for 
 me the chief shepherd of dreams is the local news- 
 paper ; and at my bedside I keep a body of these 
 lords of pretty pastures. Wherever I go about 
 London and about England, I never return without 
 the current issue of the local journal. You should 
 see my collection. It includes copies of the West- 
 moreland Gazette, the Southport Visitor, the Wood 
 Green Sentiriel, the Tottenham Herald, the Islington 
 I Daily Gazette, the Clapham Observer, the Brixton 
 Free Press, the Hornsey Journal, the Hampstead and 
 Highgate Express, the Finchley Press, the Eltham 
 Times, the East Ham Echo, the Barnet Chronicle, the 
 Staffordshire Sentinel, the Huddersfield Examiner, 
 the Burnley News, the East Anglian Times, the Scar- 
 borough Post, the Bath Herald, the Glasgow Bulletin, 
 the Bradford Telegraph, the Clifton Chronicle. 
 
 If only these journals had a wider range of " ex- 
 changes," there would be born a rapprochement 
 between suburbs, and the North's indifference to 
 the South, and the West's to the East would be 
 no more. A little understanding between suburbs, 
 as between nations, would breed sympathy and 
 respect and, later, keen interest. It is as an attempt 
 to introduce the far suburbs one to another that I 
 present this book. " The Outer Circle " which I 
 have followed is that which marks the eight-mile 
 radius from St. Paul's ; and many goodly places are 
 to be found upon its border. You may have as
 
 22 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 goodly adventure at Parson's Green as in the Strand 
 or alongside the Docks, and as rough excitement 
 of mind and body in Finsbury Park as in Spitalfields 
 or Leicester Square. Of these places I pretend to 
 show you only form and feature ; of their inwardness 
 I cannot talk. It is my purpose only to drive you 
 to seek for yourselves the souls of your own and 
 adjoining suburbs. And if you gather from your 
 study one-tenth of the delight that has come to me 
 in revisiting these little towns, you will be doing very 
 well.
 
 TOTTENHAM 
 
 " The paradise of the London worker." — Local Guide. 
 
 IF you start from Holloway and pursue Seven 
 Sisters Road to its end you will come to 
 Tottenham. You may exclaim : " Who on 
 earth wants to come to Tottenham ? " Well, quite 
 a number of people live at Tottenham, and thousands 
 of strangers go regularly to Tottenham, not to see 
 the parish church, or the room where Queen 
 Elizabeth slept, but to see the game of football 
 played at the ground of the Tottenham Hotspurs. 
 
 I first went to Tottenham one fine Saturday, 
 when I had nothing better to do. I had not meant 
 to go to Tottenham. A tramcar, labelled Waltham 
 Cross, attracted me at Tottenham Court Road by 
 its bright colour and firm lines. I boarded it. 
 Until then my journeys along Seven Sisters Road 
 had ceased at Finsbury Park. There seemed no 
 just cause for going farther. At Finsbury Park 
 was The Manor House, and at The Manor House 
 was a large concert-room, with tables and chairs 
 negligently scattered about it ; and there family 
 parties would gather and order refreshment of alert 
 waiters and listen to a string band, which afforded 
 
 23
 
 U THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 fluent music. So here one rested and speculated 
 in security on what lay beyond of peril and mis- 
 chance, and possible benightment. 
 
 But that day there was no such lure. The Manor 
 House music-room was closed, and I suffered the 
 car to bear me away. I took the hazards of the 
 road. From Holloway to Finsbury Park Station, 
 Seven Sisters Road is a long line of poor shops 
 that have not quite made up their minds what 
 produce they shall stock, and elegant residences 
 that have come down in the world and are now 
 addresses for little mail-order businesses. The very 
 road is vacillating in character, and seems not to 
 know whether it should be reticent and grave, or 
 rude and matey. It seems to have relaxed all 
 effort, and to have yielded to any external influence 
 that may beat upon it. It seems almost too tired 
 to go anywhere ; and I was astonished when I 
 discovered how far this wounded snake had dragged 
 its slow length along, shedding, on the way, some 
 half-hundred desultory by-streets. It has suffered 
 two terrible gashes ; one in the tail and one near 
 the head. The length between is bright and whole. 
 
 You are shocked when this meagre street changes 
 to solid prosperity, as it does between Finsbury 
 Park and Amhurst Park Road ; and shocked again 
 when the opulence crumbles to decay in its final 
 section ; and shocked yet again when you escape 
 from these squalors at Seven Sisters Corner into
 
 TOTTENHAM 25 
 
 High Road, Tottenham ; Tottenham, which, accord- 
 ing to Domesday Book, a Countess Judith held of 
 the King for five hides. 
 
 Here are the seven beautiful sister-trees that 
 commemorate the original seven. Here is Totten- 
 ham Green, now broken into small grassy spaces. 
 Here is the Broadway, with more trees, each tree 
 furnished with a circular seat where still the village 
 fathers gather at evening. " Tottenham is a bright, 
 cheerful, and progressive place, whether regarded 
 from a residential or commercial aspect." This you 
 may learn from the guide-book. From six months' 
 study of the daily newspapers you may learn, too, that 
 Tottenham appears in the police-courts news more 
 often than any other London borough. Press 
 and guide-book thus seem to be in agreement. Jane 
 Cakebread was a native of Tottenham. That old 
 ballad, " The Tournament of Tottenham," is not 
 yet out of date. Tottenham, with its centuries of 
 history, is young. It guards a dower of great story 
 and increases it. 
 
 At Tottenham, you may remember, begins and 
 ends the most joyous book in the English tongue. 
 " You are well overtaken, gentlemen ! " cries 
 Piscator on the opening page. ■" A good morning 
 to you both ; I have stretched my legs up Tottenham 
 Hill to overtake you, hoping your business may 
 occasion you towards Ware, whither I am going 
 this fine, fresh May morning." And Venator, at
 
 26 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 the end of his five instructive days with Piscator, 
 expresses his thanks at Tottenham High Cross in 
 good fashion. " I will requite a part of your cour- 
 tesies with a bottle of sack, milk, oranges, and sugar ; 
 which, all put together, make a drink like nectar ; 
 indeed, too good for any but us anglers." And 
 over the sack he sings Sir Henry Wotton's song to 
 Anglers. In that " sweet shady arbour," near the 
 High Cross, Piscator speaks the last words : " Study 
 to be quiet." 
 
 Well, we too may to-day stretch our legs up 
 Tottenham Hill, and may overtake good companions ; 
 and, amid the happy noise of its industrial commu- 
 nity, we may follow the pious teaching of good Isaac 
 as seriously as amid the " sweet shady arbours " 
 that he found there. " The Swan," where he some- 
 times called for his morning draught, still opens its 
 doors at noon ; but it can provide none of that 
 nectar ; nor can the little fish restaurant serve you 
 with carp as ordered by Piscator : 
 
 " Take a carp, alive if possible, scour him, and rub him 
 clean with water and salt, but scale him not ; then, open 
 him, and put him, vnth his blood and his liver, which you 
 must save when you open him, into a small pot or kettle ; 
 then take sweet marjoram, thyme, and parsley, of each 
 half a handful, a sprig of rosemary, and another of savory, 
 bind them into two or three small bundles, and put them 
 to your carp, with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled 
 oysters, and three anchovies. Then pour upon your carp 
 as much claret wine as will only cover him, and season your 
 claret well with salt, cloves, and mace, and the rinds of 
 oranges and lemons ; that done, cover your pot and set
 
 TOTTENHAM 27 
 
 it on a quick fire till it be sufficiently boiled ; then take out 
 the carp and lay it with the broth into the dish, and pour 
 upon it a quarter of a pound of the best fresh butter, melted 
 and beaten with half-a-dozen spoonfuls of the broth, the 
 yolks of two or three eggs, and some of the herbs shred ; 
 garnish your dish with lemons, and so serve it up, and much 
 good do you." 
 
 But the tale of junketings and cakes and ale is 
 not yet fully told. Along the centuries come echoes 
 of the merry times that have been round the High 
 Cross on the Green, and the echoes are caught and 
 their notes repeated ; for Tottenham is a crowded 
 London suburb, the domain of young people. 
 There is a heartiness about it that comes refresh- 
 ingly to the visitor from Highgate, where heartiness 
 is forbidden. Joy persists. There are still songs 
 to be sung. Here are still groups of those who hear 
 the chimes at midnight from All Hallows', and play 
 their pranks beneath the minatory chimneys that 
 adjoin the recreation ground. Here are still girls 
 and gardens, and moonrise, bold ribbons, shy silks 
 and muslins ; and the hearts of the boys beat bravely. 
 " Back to her nest comes the swallow in the Spring- 
 time," whispers Rodolphe in La Bohhne ; and if 
 you go to Tottenham at the time of the breaking 
 of buds, you will see in the faces of the factory boys 
 and girls the recurrent throb of beauty, WTiile 
 Highgate's motto reads : " It looks so bad," the 
 motto of Tottenham is : " \Vlio cares ? " 
 
 They live well at Tottenham. It is your good 
 fortune to find that, though " progressive," it does
 
 28 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 not move all the way with the times. One may be 
 happy at Tottenham. It supports a large music- 
 hall, a dozen or so picture-palaces, the football 
 ground, and good inns with good keepers. It owns 
 open-air swimming-baths, a Grammar School, two 
 public libraries, vast tracts of waters, the stately 
 Bruce Castle in Bruce Park, and part of the River 
 Lea. It also owns the greater length of a pleasant 
 stream called " The Moselle," which runs, or rather 
 crawls, from Muswell Hill, to which it gave a name, 
 under Lordship Lane into the Lea. Surely here is 
 enough to bring content to the keenest and most 
 curious appetite for joy. How pleasant, for instance, 
 to be able to date your correspondence from 
 Tottenham-on-Moselle. 
 
 Nor is this all. There are many minor delights 
 to be had by the voracious. In the High Road is 
 a secondhand bookshop kept by a Mr. Fisk, who 
 has written histories, full and clustering, of Totten- 
 ham and Edmonton. In his shop I discovered a 
 treasure : the author's signed copy of a novel, 
 published locally in the 'eighties : 
 
 THE OLD BULL INN OF EDMONTON 
 
 by 
 Thomas Lee, plasterer 
 
 At the Old Bull Inn 
 
 Silver Street 
 
 Edmonton 
 
 j882
 
 TOTTENHAM 29 
 
 The publican as publisher is a new idea. I wish 
 my publisher would turn publican, and send me 
 my royalties in cask and bottle. This reminds me 
 of another new idea of mine for publishers. 
 
 I have lately, like most modern authors, had the 
 doubtful pleasure of seeing a film-version of one of 
 my stories. I had always regarded this story as 
 invented and told by me ; and (again, like most 
 modern authors) I was surprised when a certain 
 skilled workman, called a producer, claimed it as 
 his. I expressed this surprise in one or two quarters, 
 and was told not to be silly. 
 
 Well, well . But it does lacerate one's vanity 
 
 to see this kind of thing : " D. W. Griffith's great 
 
 film tragedy will shortly be seen at the Cinema." 
 
 " In creating this tragic story, D. W. Griffith hopes 
 to strike out a new line." " D. W. Griffith presents 
 his poignant Limehouse drama." " Miss Mary 
 Pickford in her new film, ' Soapsuds.' " And so on. 
 
 I want to know the reason for this. Perhaps it 
 is good for the author to be knocked off his perch 
 now and then ; but is it good that pedestrian 
 mechanics should claim what is not theirs ? In 
 the theatrical world it is the same. One sees on 
 programmes this kind of thing : Mr. Middle Mann, 
 in conjunction with Mr. Gus Michigan, presents 
 Jennie Jones in his latest production, " The Man 
 who Went Upstairs." Wliat these people had to 
 do with writing the play is not made clear ; but
 
 30 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 throughout the run it is described as " their " play. 
 The author's name must be sought among the 
 advertisements with a magnifying-glass. 
 
 Why should these people make this false claim 
 to the product of other men's brains ? By them- 
 selves they can do nothing. They can present, 
 but they cannot invent. They are skilled labourers, 
 whose relation to an author's work is similar to that 
 of printers, binders, and publishers. The position 
 of the play-actor is that of the printer ; he takes 
 other men's work and gives it an attractive appear- 
 ance. He is a go-between, carrying the author's 
 written word to a larger number of people than 
 the author, individually, could reach. When he 
 assumes the title " artist," and claims to " create " 
 character, he is merely impudent ; as impudent as 
 the bricklayer who credits himself with the architect's 
 brains. The position of the producer, who always 
 speaks of his production, is that of the pubhsher. 
 Yet we do not find pubhshers calling themselves 
 creative artists or claiming credit for the work of 
 their authors. When we pick up a book we find 
 •the author's name in good black type on title-page, 
 cover, and jacket, and the publisher's imprint in 
 modest type at the bottom of page, cover, and 
 jacket. 
 
 The actor and the producer have very little to do 
 with the success of a play. The greatest and most 
 popular actor of his time cannot draw an audience
 
 TOTTENHAM 81 
 
 to a poor play ; the most indifferent company of 
 players can fill a theatre with a good play. But if 
 the producer and the actor may lay claim to other 
 people's work, then the publisher may do so. 
 
 And this is my idea : that publishers should come 
 into line with the theatre and the " movie " world. 
 Let them " feature " themselves. Let us have no 
 more of this disgusting truckling to the vanity of 
 the wretched working-man who writes the stuff. 
 If you pay him for his work, what right has he to 
 expect a place on the " bill " ? Let us hear no 
 more of " Mr. Compton Mackenzie's new novel," 
 or " Mr. John Masefield's great tragedy." Let us 
 have something like this : 
 
 MESSRS. MIDDLEMEN & CO. 
 
 Present 
 
 Their Great New Work of Humour, 
 
 "THE PICKWICK PAPERS." 
 
 Printed by Messrs. Long, Primer & Co. 
 
 Comp.-ing by Fred Jones, Arthur Brown, 
 Harry Robinson, and Jack Smith. 
 
 Machined by Messrs. Stereo, Matrix, Mould 
 and C'otype, 
 
 On Paper manufactured by White, Ragg & Co., 
 
 Bound by Messrs. Straw, Bord & Co. 
 
 And, in some obscure corner (in nonpareil, please. 
 Printer) : 
 
 From a manuscript by Charles Dicktns.
 
 82 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Or like this : 
 
 Coming Shortly I 
 
 The Art and Crafty Press' Remarkable Life of Dr, Samuel 
 
 Johnson. 
 
 Never has the A. & C. covered such a wide range of human 
 interest in one book. Here are observation, humour, sharp 
 character-drawing, brilliant dialogue. The A. & C. has at 
 last produced the perfect biography. The A. & C. is in- 
 debted to some slight extent to a rough manuscript by J. 
 Boswell, and they have here shown what great artists can 
 do with slender material. 
 
 That's the style. No doubt advertisements in 
 this vein would arouse bitter indignation ; yet 
 they are not a bit more arrogant or misleading than 
 the claims of those skilled mechanics — producers, 
 actors, and managers. I offer the idea to some 
 enterprising young publisher. He need not fear 
 that he will lose by it. Authors will put up with 
 anything. They are the tamest creatures, and 
 would feed out of a publisher's hand — if he ever 
 gave them the chance. 
 
 Pardon this digression ; I was led into it by the 
 blessed word " publisher." Let us get back to 
 High Road, Tottenham. Among its minor delights, 
 for me, was that of discovering, in a newsagent's 
 window, some rare publications, which carried me 
 back to the days of my youth and to the Penny 
 Readings in the Church Schools, 
 
 Yes, in Tottenham they are still offering the poems 
 of W. A. Eaton, each poem printed on a galley slip,
 
 TOTTENHAM 33 
 
 price one penny, the price which I paid many years 
 ago for my copy of " The Fireman's Wedding." 
 Honour to his pubHshers for resisting the temptation 
 to profiteer. Honour to Tottenham for thus nurturing 
 his fame. 
 
 The unbeautiful Cross which stands midmost the 
 tide of Tottenham's business is not that in whose 
 shade Isaac Walton rested ; it was erected in 1889 
 by a local ecclesiastic to replace the old wooden 
 cross that was then crumbling to touchwood. Since 
 the fifteenth century a cross has stood there. 
 " There has been a cross here of long continuance, 
 even so long as since the decree was made by the 
 Church that every parish should in places most 
 frequented set up a Cross." It is not an Eleanor 
 Cross, though it follows the form of those erected 
 at the halting-places of that queen's remains. It 
 was in existence before that event, and, according 
 to an old topographist, was " re-edified and perad- 
 venture raised higher " in anticipation of the proces- 
 sion passing through Tottenham. Near the Cross 
 are some gracious groups of almshouses — Reynard- 
 son's Alm.shouses, the Pound Almshouses, the 
 Sanchez Almshouses, and the Sailmakers' Alms- 
 houses — and the rest of the High Road buildings 
 fit aptly with these cottages. There are no soaring 
 shops or many-storied houses ; all are flat, and 
 low-pitched, making no endeavour towards the 
 grandiose. The oldest of the charities is the 
 
 8
 
 34 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Sanchez group, which were built in 1596 by a baker 
 who baked for Philip of Spain and visited England 
 with him. After having suffered many renovations 
 they now stand empty, condemned as unfit for 
 habitation, 
 
 Tottenham's other famous relic is Bruce Castle, 
 now a public museum, mainly of zoological speci- 
 mens. The present building dates from the sixteenth 
 century, but the original castle was the property 
 of Robert Bruce, who settled there after his vain 
 bid for the crown of Scotland. It was rebuilt by 
 a courtier of Henry VIII, who there received his 
 royal master. Thereafter it passed through various 
 hands, falling step by step from its high estate. 
 Sir Rowland Hill purchased it early in the nine- 
 teenth century and made a boarding school of it ; 
 and a school it remained until, in 1891, the alert 
 local council secured castle and grounds for the 
 public. The old parish church, bowed with years 
 as it is, can hardly be called a relic, for very httle of 
 its original fabric remains. It suffered " restoration " 
 in 1876. Its records are yellow, for, according to a 
 copy of a charter to be found on its walls. King 
 David of Scotland bestowed it in the twelfth century 
 on the Canons of Holy Trinity, London. Among 
 its many treasures is one of human, rather than 
 spiritual, interest. This is to be found in the belfry 
 — a silver-toned bell, which was the bell used as an 
 alarm-signal to the garrison of Quebec. It was
 
 TOTTENHAM 85 
 
 captured at the siege of Quebec by a group of 
 drunken seamen who surprised its guard before a 
 note could be struck from it. What has Mr. Pussyfoot 
 to say to that ? 
 
 Next the High Road, Tottenham's most important 
 thoroughfare is Lordship Lane, which connects it 
 with Wood Green. Of Lordship Lane the local 
 guide says : " This fine thoroughfare. . . Walking 
 or riding down it, one finds it easy to imagine the 
 period when it was open country and pleasantly 
 rural in appearance." Does one ? I don't. I can 
 more easily find the skylark in Ludgate Hill. It 
 has no air of Lordship. It cringes. It seems very 
 sorry for itself. It meanders, rather than goes, 
 to Wood Green. I speak only of its physical fea- 
 tures — its houses, shops, and waste places — not 
 of its people : I am sure they do not cringe. It 
 affects one with torpor after the bright business of 
 the High Road. Now there certainly is something 
 lordly about the High Road, and its grand swing 
 from Stamford Hill into Edmonton. You do not 
 need a history book to tell you that this was one of 
 the great highways, where noble carriages, mail 
 coaches, and mounted men made great occasion. 
 Elizabeth — Elizabeth is a perfect nuisance to a 
 writer of local history — Elizabeth made many jour- 
 neys to Tottenham, sometimes for a visit, sometimes 
 on her way to a hunting holiday — in Enfield Chase. 
 
 On this road halted James VI of Scotland on his
 
 36 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 way to receive the English crown (Tottenham was 
 pestered in those days with Scotch lords and rulers, 
 as London has been pestered with them since). 
 Many times, later, did James pass by, for he, too, 
 found delight in Enfield Chase and at Theobalds, 
 the home of Cecil, where he and the King of Denmark 
 spent som.e wanton hours. Indiscreet memoirs of 
 the period have fully confirmed the conjecture that 
 this Scotch James was a pervert. 
 
 Through Tottenham, too, passed often that 
 unfortunate set — Winter, Catesby, Fawkes, Meaze, 
 and Rookwood on their way to White Webbs, at 
 Enfield, where they met to co-ordinate their plans 
 Unfortunately, they failed. Had they succeeded, 
 instead of being carted round the streets in 
 eifigy, on November 5th, they would be honoured 
 by processions of sanctimonious pilgrims bearing 
 wreaths for their tombs in Westminster Abbey.
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 
 
 ELEGANT Eltham! 
 The slim, mincing syllables of the adjective 
 mate very well with the rotund fat of the 
 noun. Eltham retains to-day the physical features 
 of a country village and much of its spirit ; for no 
 suburb is more " suburban " than your country 
 village, if by " suburban " one understands barren- 
 ness of mind, meanness of soul, pursuit of the paltry 
 and disdain of the less fortunate. Old Sobersides 
 and his friend Agelast have planted heavy feet in 
 Eltham. It is the home of brokers, retired trades- 
 men and pious ladies who attend week-night services ; 
 and it carries itself as such. It is complacent with 
 prosperity ; greasily opulent ; not with the confident 
 opulence of Mayfair, or the loud, candid opulence 
 of the profiteer : it is stuck uncomfortably between 
 the two. 
 
 Coming to it from the jocund precincts of its 
 neighbour, Woolwich, one is sensible of a chill, as 
 of cold boiled potatoes. The streets of Woolwich 
 are gay with girls, but Eltham High Street and 
 Court Road are prinked with " young ladies " and 
 old matrons, wearing artless travesties of Bond 
 
 37
 
 88 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Street fashions. Genteel is not too strong a word 
 for it. There is something tart to the palate in 
 its atmosphere — a tincture of discontent. Its 
 people would like to be something better than they 
 already pretend to be. They look too unconvinc- 
 ingly prosperous. It is difficult to believe that 
 people could be so actually prosperous as Eltham 
 people look. 
 
 It has a story that clatters with armour and 
 sword, and blazes with bugles and pageantry ; and 
 under the shadow of these things waddle stock- 
 brokers and retired bootmakers who have only seen 
 the boots that themselves wear. This story has 
 been told in a portly tome by Mr. Gregory, an 
 Eltham schoolmaster, who, in his work, carried 
 out successfully an attempt to teach his scholars 
 English history through the story of their own 
 village. Mr. Gregory is a native of Somerset, and 
 it is quite in character that Eltham's history should 
 have been dug from oblivion and recorded by a 
 stranger. No Eltham " resident " cares a damn 
 about Eltham's story. Mexican Oils are more his 
 concern than the springs of History. Indeed, to-day's 
 Elthamites are zealous in endeavours to hide the 
 history away, to draw attention to their " desirable 
 residences " and " commodious villas " ; but at 
 this or that turn the posture and apparel of the 
 florid past peep from behind the flimsy walls of 
 to-day and shame the cold-potato-ism of the villas.
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 89 
 
 (How this man does love Eltham, doesn't he ? 
 Yes, I think he must have lived there.) 
 
 And what material it has ! When Eltham Palace 
 was a royal residence, great names appeared on 
 its invitation list ; and among those present, on 
 divers occasions, were Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, 
 Vandyck, Holbein, Wolsey, Chaucer, the Black 
 Prince, the Earl of Essex, and, of course, the usual 
 kings and princes, to whom a grateful nation offered 
 the palace rent-free. 
 
 When John of France was taken prisoner by the 
 Black Prince he was brought, in gentle captivity, 
 to England, and Eltham Palace was his very com- 
 fortable gaol. The Trade Union of Kings arranged 
 the comfort. With him came Froissart as secretary. 
 The traceable homes and haunts of the old chronicler 
 are so few that for this reason alone Eltham should 
 be a treasured link with far-off things. 
 
 It was about 1360 that Edward III rebuilt and 
 enlarged a scattered group of buildings which became 
 Eltham Palace, and appointed it a Royal residence. 
 From Edward III, then, to Charles I, every English 
 sovereign, in unbroken succession, made here his 
 home, and feasted and danced within the great 
 banqueting hall, where now grow shoots of tender 
 grass. At this palace took place a famous incident 
 which Shakespeare, with his customary licence, 
 has placed at Coventry — the departure of Henry 
 Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, into banishment.
 
 40 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 According to Holinshed, the Duke " took his leave 
 of the King at Eltham, and took his journie into 
 Calis." On his next visit to the Palace he came 
 as Henry IV. 
 
 It was to the Palace that Henry V, flushed with 
 the gory glory of Agincourt, brought his prisoners, 
 and there lodged them, continuing, next day, his 
 triumphal progress to London. Some years later, 
 on Christmas Eve, 1515, arrived at the Palace gates 
 another hero, then at the height of his triumphs, 
 Cardinal Wolsey, summoned thither by his king. 
 Following him a few hours later came Archbishop 
 Warham, also by Royal summons. The one came 
 to surrender the Chancellorship, the other to 
 receive it ; and the little wooden cottages that 
 stand now, as then, by the moat bridge, were my 
 Lord Chancellor's lodgings. 
 
 Erasmus, introduced b}'' Sir Thomas More (an 
 Eltham landowner, of the manor of Well Hall), 
 was a guest of Henry VII, and records a joyful 
 hour spent with the young princes and the princess. 
 So much enraptured was he with them that " I 
 invoked the Muse that had long been absent, and 
 composed an elegant Ode in Praise of England " 
 for their delectation. John Evelyn, the dull diarist, 
 was a frequent visitor ; Vandyck had rooms set 
 aside for his use ; and one, Cornelius Debrell, was 
 assigned a suite of apartments that he might expound 
 and demonstrate to James I and " Stinie " his
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 41 
 
 marvellous new discovery (which is still being dis- 
 covered) of the secret of perpetual motion. 
 
 Domesday Book refers to Alteham as being a 
 manor in the Kingdom of Kent, but the buildings 
 whose fragments now remain were erected by 
 Edward III. Originally, when in use as a Royal 
 residence, the estate comprised the capital mansion 
 house, the banqueting hall, the great hall, the chapel, 
 the keeper's house, and around the courtyard (now 
 a street of cottages and small provision shops) were 
 the buttery, the spicery, the pastry, the cole-house, 
 the slaughter-house, the bakehouse, and the scalding- 
 house. To-day all that remains is the banqueting 
 hall, the lodge, the moat, and the stone bridge. 
 The banqueting hall, very similar to the Great Hall 
 of Hampton Court, is a beautiful piece of work, 
 notable for its elegant simplicity. It is splendidly 
 lighted by twenty-two high windows, now empty 
 of glass and ragged with birds' nests. Beneath the 
 hall run many wonderful passages, giving egress to 
 the moat. It is not improbable that residents of 
 the Palace may from time to time have found it 
 convenient to leave by other than the front gate ; 
 certainly the passages are cunningly and solidly 
 constructed, and have survived the main mansion 
 by more than two centuries. 
 
 With the execution of Charles I came an end of 
 its glories. A few days after the catastrophe — or 
 act of justice, according to opinion — Parliament
 
 42 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 found it necessary to send a Colonel Rich with a 
 body of troops to protect the Palace from plunderers. 
 With the Restoration it passed once more to the 
 Crown. But its days were done. It was never 
 again used as a residence by an English Sovereign. 
 After the pillagers had done their work, nothing 
 could revive its old charm and splendour, and it 
 was allowed to fall away. Indeed, the greater part 
 of it was actually destroyed ; only the banqueting 
 hall was allowed to stand — it was found to be so 
 well adapted for a stable ! 
 
 It may not be long, indeed, before the few forlorn 
 relics are altogether gone. They stand to-day amid 
 surroundings pastoral and ludicrous. You approach 
 it by the very stone bridge constructed by Edward III 
 which leads over the sluggish green water of the 
 moat. On your right is a prospect of sloping fields, 
 with, on the sky line, the towers of the Crystal 
 Palace, and (save on very misty days) Westminster 
 Cathedral, St. Paul's, Big Ben, and the Victoria 
 Tower. On your left are straight roads of desirable 
 villa residences in glaring red-brick and stucco. 
 By the bridge a notice-board shouts at you the 
 searching question : " Why Pay Rent ? £io Down 
 Makes You a Landlord," They do not ask for 
 money. They trust you ! The age of chivalry is 
 not yet dead. 
 
 Other great names had association with Eltham 
 — Margaret Roper, John Lilburne, Sir Christopher
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 48 
 
 Hatton, Sherard, the horticulturist. Sir Thomas 
 Walsingham, Thomas Fairfax, Richard Bloomfield, 
 and Richard Jefferies — but Eltham does not care. 
 It is much more agitated over that mushroom 
 village which the War Office spawned upon it, near 
 Well Hall. Eltham has never forgiven Well Hall 
 for its impudence in seating itself at its elbow and 
 ignoring Eltham's pseudo-patrician frown. — " Cheap 
 workmen's villas, you know, dear — Clean their own 
 front steps, and go shopping on Saturday nights — 
 Thank goodness they go to Woolwich for the wretched 
 business." And fortunately, under the order of the 
 estate trustees, no intoxicating liquor may be sold 
 upon the Corbett Estate, which is the hamlet of 
 Well Hall ; and in the case of sickness in the house 
 the Well Hall man has to run three-quarters of a 
 mile for a bottle of brandy. Still, it keeps him in 
 order and serves to remind him that he is intruding 
 on a " select " suburb. 
 
 Froissart has left a tender record of his last visit 
 to the Palace. His object was to present to Richard 
 II a copy of his Book of Loves. Delightful Sir John ! 
 Delighted Richard I For " I showed him how that 
 it treated of matters of love, whereof the King was 
 very glad, and he gave it to Sir Richard Crendon 
 to bear into his secret chamber." The whole scene 
 is naively pictured in an old print, where Richard 
 is to be seen stretched upon a luxurious couch, 
 turning with delicate fingers the leaves of a handsome
 
 44 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 tome, while Sir John sits upon a stool by the couch, 
 and looks towards Richard with the timidly swanky 
 air of the new author waiting for approbation. 
 
 I wonder what would happen, if one presented a 
 Book of Loves to the Public Library of Eltham to-day 1 
 I think the suetty mind of Eltham would fall upon 
 the donor, and effectually extinguish in him any 
 desire to repeat bis public-spirited action. Eltham 
 has suffered a vast money-change since those days 
 into something sparse and too familiar. 
 
 At the Records Office you may find, among the 
 papers relating to Eltham Palace a " Writ, discharging 
 Geoffrey Chaucer, Clerk of His Majesty's Works " 
 from repayment of a sum of ten pounds, the property 
 of the King. This Geoffrey, it appears, was journey- 
 ing, on horseback, from Westminster to Eltham, 
 with the King's money ; and at Hatcham, near New 
 Cross, he was set upon by four scurvy knaves, and 
 robbed of his horse and all that he carried with him. 
 He finished the journey on foot, told his story at 
 the Palace, and was subsequently given a formal 
 pardon for his misfortune. Shortly afterwards, how- 
 ever, Mr. Chaucer retired from his post, which seems to 
 suggest that the matter of the ten pounds still rankled 
 in the royal mind. So much the better, if it freed 
 Mr. Chaucer from dangling after His Peevishness, 
 and left him to amuse himself with the Wyf of Bath. 
 
 But such adventures are not now to be had at 
 Eltham. They wouldn't be " allowed," I am sure.
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 45 
 
 I made my journey to Eltham in search of adventure, 
 and found nothing. Adventure, I know, is not a 
 commodity which can be obtained in sacks or chunks. 
 You must make your adventure, if you want it. 
 But in Eltham there are no materials out of which 
 to make adventure ; and even if you take your 
 material with you, there is something in the atmo- 
 sphere that re-acts on the material, and reduces a 
 possible good dumpling of adventure to the con- 
 sistency of bill-stickers' paste. Changing the 
 metaphor, what you think shall be a jamboree 
 declines into a spelling-bee. 
 
 Of Eltham I saw the unmellowed parish church 
 — neither new nor old — under whose shadow rest 
 Doggett, the comedian, of the " Coat and Badge," 
 and Henry Seton Merriman — the Castle Hotel, the 
 Public Library, the old Alms-houses, the Palace 
 ruins. Well Hall manor house, the old houses of 
 the courtyard, the new daughters of the retired 
 provision merchant, the stout matrons of the 
 Bombazine period, and the one reprobate of the 
 place, who enters public-houses in broad daylight 
 without looking to see if he is observed. 
 
 So I traded the fretful complacency of Eltham for 
 the ornate clangours of Woolwich. Now Woolwich 
 is a place. One may laugh in Woolwich, and catch 
 adventure at every corner. I love the noise of men. 
 That is why I love Woolwich. It does not attract 
 at first sight. One could not love it for itself alone.
 
 46 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 It possesses no external beauties, no excellences of 
 line or feature, is tricked with no fair clothing. To 
 love Woolwich one must love one's kind ; one must 
 hold an instinct for humanity in its most crude 
 expression — soldiers, sailors, policemen, costers. 
 The very name of its station carries a primeval 
 growl and clatter in its syllables— Woolwich Arsenal ! 
 
 The essence of Woolwich is Beresford Square. 
 It is Woolwich Bovrilized. At half an hour past 
 noon the Arsenal gates open upon it, and it becomes 
 the property of the Amalgamated Society of Engin- 
 eers. In the evening it belongs to aimless, sauntering 
 soldiers and their ladies. On Saturday nights it is 
 a joyous country-town market-place, filled with 
 cheapjacks, where the Cockney and the Kentish 
 tongues are vigorously exchanged. On Sunday 
 nights it is an arena where all the creeds of the world 
 wrestle for supremacy : Salvation Army, Agnostic, 
 Free Church, Socialist Brotherhood, Ethicalist, 
 Calvinist, Comtist, Hegelian, Bolshevist — there they 
 gather and dispute about it and about, and ever- 
 more are moved on by the over-worked police. 
 
 At all other times it is just Beresford Square, 
 Woolwich, where you may buy the best of all fried 
 potatoes. Woolwich is more than a suburb. It is 
 a provincial town. Peopled by Cockneys, it yet 
 stands apart from the metropolis ; belts of bare 
 field sever it from London ,* and the people seem to 
 be conscious of this separation.
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH m 
 
 It has its own Co-operative Society, a bijou 
 theatre adjoining the Barracks, called the Royal 
 Garrison Theatre, a Gulliver music-hall, and " Bar- 
 nard's " — otherwise the Theatre Royal, Woolwich. 
 It is to Barnard's, by the waterside, that all earnest 
 seekers of entertainment go. I have spent some 
 delightful evenings in its gallery. Barnard's was the 
 last stronghold of the florid school of acting and 
 drama. There one saw the full-blooded mellow dramas 
 of twenty years ago : " The 10.30 Down Express," 
 "Man and His Master," "London by Night," 
 " The Still Alarm," " The Midnight Mail," " Harbour 
 Lights," and so on. The audience, too, was of the 
 old order. All that happened on the stage was of 
 personal interest to the gallery. 
 
 " Leave 'im alone, you brute." " Grr — 'it a 
 woman ? — grr, yeh dirty dog ! " " Don't you go 
 with 'im, gel — 'e's a wrong 'un ! " " Look be'ind 
 the curtain, yeh fool — look be'ind the curtain ! " 
 " That Sir Gregory, y'know — I don't believe in 
 'im. I believe 'e'll turn out a bad 'un 'fore the 
 play's over ! " 
 
 Which reminds me of what is, to me, a new story 
 of Irving. Irving was rehearsing a play at the 
 Lyceum, in which a real horse figured ; and an order 
 for a horse was sent to Aldridge's. In due course 
 an animal was brought to the scenery door and led 
 to the stage. Irving walked round it. 
 
 " H'm. A fine animal. Very fine animal, indeed.
 
 48 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Tell me, is this animal likely to be at all nervous of 
 the crowd and the footlights ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, S'r 'Enry. 'E's bin on the stage before." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? An actorr ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, S'r 'Enry. 'E's bin in ' Bound "to 
 Win 'and ' Sporting Luck ' and ' The Still Alarm/ 
 and 
 
 " Oh, quite an actorr, quite an actorr." 
 
 " Oh, yes, S'r 'Enry. Why, lars' yer 'e played 
 with Mr. Tree through the run of Richard the Third. 
 All excep' the lars' week, that is." 
 
 " Oh, quite an actorr. Quite an actorr. Tell me, 
 why didn't he play the last week ? " 
 
 " Well, S'r 'Enry, as a matter o' fac', one night 
 when Mr. Tree was on, fer the first time in his ar- 
 tistic career, 'e fergot 'isself, and lashed out and 
 kicked Mr. Tree." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? A critic, too ? " 
 
 Wandering about the waterside alleys of Woolwich 
 and its quaint wine-shops, I encountered my old 
 friend Turnkettle— J. Turnkettle— Light Work Done 
 With Horse and Van. Turnkettle is a Character, 
 a Card, a Lad, a Nut — whatever word you please 
 that designates one full of original whimsy and 
 defiant idiosyncrasy. 
 
 He is physically and morally large, and his voice, 
 when it first comes to you, comes as a shock, so 
 meagre and Lilliputian is it. But his laugh holds 
 double measure. It comes from the deeps and
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 49 
 
 shakes the furniture. He laughs at everything ; 
 at himself, at the weather, at you, at the cost of 
 living, at Woolwich, at the horse-and-van, and with 
 everybody ; in a laugh that resembles an American 
 college yell, loaded with various noise. It crashes 
 and jangles, and booms, and buzzes, and ends abruptly 
 in a nasal snort, as though surprised at itself. Even 
 the grotesque cauliflower fist that incloses his glass 
 cannot shield its contents from the disturbance of 
 the local air. His laugh seems to belong to Woolwich, 
 to be charged with Woolwich. Against it, all 
 other noises become wizened. That laugh and its 
 producer's prodigal magnanimity will relax the 
 most arctic social atmosphere. I have seen two 
 sworn enemies talk to one another in his company 
 You have but to hear him ask you : 
 
 " Well, how're things with you, boy ? " and follow 
 the question with his great laugh ; and, whatever 
 answer you were about to make, you are compelled 
 to say that things are very well with you. 
 
 We spent a few raucous minutes in one of those 
 places where all men are equal ; and then he said he 
 was doing nothing with the old brougham, and would 
 I go "tatts" with him. I said that I was always 
 ready to go "tatts" with anybody, but that on this 
 occasion I could go no farther than Eltham, as I 
 wished to return from there so as to take Lewisham 
 in my way. He said he would run me up, so we 
 went out, and, while he unhitched his horse's feed- 
 
 4
 
 50 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 bag, I stood watching a wandering minstrel with 
 a dulcimer, who was performing in the passage. I 
 am always drawn towards street entertainers ; they 
 have that fascination for me that an empty salmon- 
 tin in the gutter has for an errand boy. He looked 
 up at Turnkettle, as we passed, but went on with 
 his work. His style with the sticks was pretty, and 
 I was about to address him, when he galloped hell- 
 for-leather through the coda of the " William Tell " 
 overture, gave a valedictory flourish of the hammers, 
 and cried : "Hi, Turney ! " Turnkettle looked 
 round. Nobody respects Turney ; everybody loves 
 him. " Where yeh going, boy ? " 
 
 " Eltham," replied Turney. 
 
 " Give us a lift, then. I want to get up to Catford. 
 There's nothing doing 'ere." 
 
 " Righto. Jump up." 
 
 So he jumped up, and we three — the Big 
 Turnkettle, the tiny dulcimer virtuoso, and the 
 traveller jogged into the drawing-room tranquilities 
 of Eltham. There Turney inquired of us if we would 
 not " take a little something," which we did ; and 
 I left the dulcimer man arranging his instrument 
 outside the Castle Hotel (what hopes !), and Turney 
 laughing at the PubHc Library. 
 
 I took the 'bus for Lewisham, and there met the 
 sailor who was proud of his mother. The 'bus was 
 full of Elthamites and Sidcuppians. They were a 
 sheep-faced lot, and hide-bound. The social atmo-
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 51 
 
 sphere was ice-bound. The sailor came aboard in 
 the Eltham Road like a high and gusty noon. 
 
 " Now we shan't be long. Oo — ^seats empty, 
 eh ? Scrumpshus. Ha ! " 
 
 With the explosive " Ha ! " he tumbled into a 
 seat and smiled broadly upon us. 
 
 " Leaf ! " he exclaimed. Then, with fine inconse- 
 quence : " Tea ! A meat tea. Sardines. 'Am. 
 Chips. Reddishes. Pancakes, too, shouldn't wonder. 
 All ready for me when I get 'ome. Kettle boiling. 
 Bren-butter all cut. And my ol' mother with the 
 teapot in 'er 'and. Ah," he gurgled, " I got a good 
 ol' mother, I 'ave. I 'ope you all got good ol' 
 mothers. I reckon you 'ave. You look as though 
 you 'ad. Eh ? " 
 
 We did not admit the existence of mothers, but 
 he was not abashed. " Great thing," he continued, 
 lyrically, " to 'ave a good ol' mother, isn't it ? 
 'Alf the battle, as they say, like. Don't you think 
 so, mate ? " He nudged his neighbour, a stout 
 member of the Old Proud. " You 'ad a good ol' 
 mother, I bet." 
 
 The Old Proud preened itself a little, examined 
 its boots, coughed, and looked through the 
 window. 
 
 The silence was frostbitten, and the sailor suddenly 
 was aware of it. " Hi, Nobby I " to the conductor ; 
 " what's the matter with your mess to-day ? Got 
 the fantods, ain't they ? "
 
 52 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 The saturnine man on the step gave a non- 
 committal shrug. 
 
 " I tell 'em I got a good ol' mother, and they 
 sniff." 
 
 " Well, they don't want to 'ear about yer ol' 
 mother." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " 'Cos they don't." 
 
 " H'm." He pondered this for some moments ; 
 then his face lightened. " I know what it is. They 
 think I'm drunk. Just 'cos I talk to 'em free-an'- 
 easy, they think I'm drunk. That's what it is. 
 But I ain't. I'm just 'appy. I ain't seen my ol' 
 mother for three yers, and 'cos I tell 'em about it 
 they think I'm drunk." 
 
 " Well, I dessay we all got good mothers, but we 
 don't make a song about it." 
 
 " Why don't yeh ? " 
 
 This somewhat flattened the conductor. 
 
 " Why don't yeh ? Eh ? Y'ought to. Ev'body 
 that's got a good ol' mother oughter make a song 
 about it." 
 
 " Ho, really ? Nice thing it'd be, wouldn't it, 
 if ev'body that's got a good ol' mother went about 
 making a song of it. Nice thing to 'ave the ol' 
 cart full inside and out, and ev'body making a song 
 about their ol' mothers." 
 
 " You're right, Nobby," returned the sailor, 
 "You're right. It would be a nice thing. We
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 5a 
 
 ought to 'ave more of it. Wouldn't it cheer ev'body 
 up on your rowt and make 'em all remember what 
 good mothers they got. Eh ? I wish I'd seen a 
 cartload like that yers ago, to remind me what a 
 good or mother I 'ad. I didn't know it till I got 
 away fer three yers. And now I'm going 'ome, 
 and she's writ and tell me all about the meat tea 
 what'll be ready fer me at sem o'clock. And 'cos 
 I want to tell somebody about it, they think I'm 
 drunk. It's all wrong." 
 
 " Oh, shut up about yer mother, fer 'eaven's 
 sake ! " implored the conductor. 
 
 " Shan't. And what's more, you can't make me. 
 I ain't drunk, and I ain't misbe'aving. So you 
 can't put me off. Anybody 'd think 3^ou was all 
 ashamed of 'aving good mothers. 'Ere — you, miss " 
 — he nudged a stout matron — " you 'ad a good 
 ol' mother, I bet." 
 
 He turned an imploring look upon her. The 
 corners of his lips twinkled. In a moment the 
 corners of her lips returned the twinkle. " Yes, 
 I had," she answered, with some embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 " Hooray ! " he yelled. " See ? There's one of 
 yeh ain't ashamed to own it. There's one of yeh 
 simply bursting to make a song about 'er ol' mother. 
 I bet that lady's just dying to tell me that she 'ad 
 a better mother'n what I 'ad. Go on, miss. Let's 
 talk about our mothers. Shall us ? Never mind
 
 54 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 them. Your mother ever tell you nursery rhymes 
 — This liddle pig went to market — eh ? " 
 
 " Er— yes." 
 
 " Ah, I thought so. And Mary, Mary quite 
 contrary — eh ? " 
 
 " Banbury Cross ! " snapped the member of the 
 Old Proud. 
 
 " Hooray — 'ere's another. 'E knows some. I bet 
 
 'e 'ad a good ol' mother. Ride a cock-'orse to 
 
 My ol' mother used to sing that after bath -night 
 — Sat'dys." 
 
 " Quite so," murmured the Old Proud. " Quite 
 so. And Water, water quench fire, Fire, fire hum 
 stick " 
 
 " Ah, you know 'em, guv'nor ! " He almost 
 danced in his seat. " 'Ow does it go ? And the 
 cat began to kill the rat, and the rat began to gnaw the 
 rope, and the rope " 
 
 A greybeard in the corner volunteered. " And the 
 rope began to hang the butcher, and the butcher 
 began to kill the ox, and the ox began to " 
 
 " That's it ! That's the stuff to give 'em. Lor 
 — 'ow many yers since my ol' mother sang 'em to 
 me ! Takes you back a bit, don't it, guv'nor ? " 
 
 " H'm — er — yes — quite a while," murmured the 
 greybeard. " Quite a while." He looked vacantly 
 into space, and his voice fell to a croon of " cow 
 fiddle the moon." 
 
 " Ah, I tell yeh, soon's I get 'ome, and get outside
 
 ELTHAM AND WOOLWICH 65 
 
 that meat tea, next thing I'm going to do is to set 
 my ol' mother to singing 'em all over again. Every 
 blessed one. What's this ? Lewisham Road ? 
 This is mine. 'Nother two minutes, an' I'll be there. 
 I can see the kettle boiling over. Oh, I got a good 
 ol' mother, I 'ave. Bonswaw 1 " 
 
 He scrambled to the pavement, the conductor 
 jerked the cord, and from the twihght followed a 
 lusty voice : " Meat tea. . . . Cockle shells, all in 
 
 a row." 
 
 And, as we laboured on, the conductor scratched 
 his head and gazed about him, murmuring, " Up 
 the clock. Up the clock. The clock struck one, 
 and, and Oh, aw fez pliz ! " 
 
 And so on to the Marquis of Granby.
 
 FORTIS GREEN 
 
 I HAVE just been to see Fortis Green, and I don't 
 believe it. I think it must have been a mirage. 
 I think, if I go there to-morrow, I shall find that 
 it and its people have vanished, and, like that insub- 
 stantial pageant, faded, left not a rack behind. It 
 is so remote from every-dayliness ; it is so improb- 
 able. It is a musical-comedy suburb ; a place of 
 Puckish humours. When I tell you what I found 
 there, you wiU, I anticipate, tell me I am inventing. 
 
 Fortis Green is a diminutive suburb. It is a 
 narrow strip of territory connecting East Finchley 
 with Muswell Hill ; but that narrow strip is richer 
 in human interest than many acres of Bayswater 
 or Westminster. It " appears " under the direction 
 of the Hornsey Borough Council — an energetic 
 and bright-eyed Council. When stray specks of 
 dust appear on the roads, the water-carts are sent 
 out. After a heavy fall of snow, men appear from 
 nowhere to clear it away. Always it is well-kempt 
 and natty. 
 
 The Council and its employees seem to follow 
 the advice of Samuel Smiles, and take an interest 
 in their job. When a fire breaks out, the fire-engine 
 
 66
 
 FORTIS GREEN 57 
 
 arrives well within half-an-hour of the outbreak. 
 The Roj^'al Borough of Kensington is not more 
 carefully tended. 
 
 Natty. I think that is just the word for Fortis 
 Green — place and people. It is bordered by trim 
 villas, their front gardens bright with lilac, laburnum, 
 chestnut, and jasmine bushes. It has pleasant 
 open spaces, named Coldfall Woods, from which 
 householders, in consideration of an annual payment, 
 may gather fuel for the winter-time against the 
 next coal-strike. Its women and children have a 
 natty appearance, and even its dogs wag their tails 
 with a pertness not found in the dogs of other suburbs. 
 
 But it is its cluster of human character that marks 
 it most sharply from other suburbs. Surely no 
 road of the same length is so fertile in queer company, 
 so pregnant with comedy and quaint idiosyncrasy. 
 There's the comic greengrocer. Passing his shop, 
 you might pass it as a suburban greengrocer's shop. 
 It isn't. It and its proprietor have wandered from 
 the vaudeville stage. Never was a pound of cherries 
 sold with so much badinage and " business." He 
 will sell you a marrow, as though the sale of a marrow 
 were a bustling Italian farce. An order for lettuce 
 is to him as the callboy's message to Leslie Henson. 
 There is nothing inherently funny about a cauli- 
 flower ; yet this comic grocer of greens so touches 
 the vegetable with his humours as to invest it with 
 almost Rabelaisian grotesquerie.
 
 58 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Then there's the little beer-house, known as 
 " Dolly's." Good company at " Dolly's," I warrant 
 you. " Dolly " is a landlord of the substantial 
 type. Watch him draw a pint of beer. It is a 
 ceremony ; a solemn observance. None of your 
 slapdash ways here, but amplitude of gesture and a 
 reverential bearing of the filled tankard to the 
 counter. Even the man who has a train to catch 
 cannot disturb this function or accelerate it. It is 
 Olympian. 
 
 Then there's the Fortis Green Literary and 
 Debating Society, whose meetings are even more 
 solemnly funny than those at St. Stephen's. Perhaps 
 you know these societies ? Every self-respecting 
 suburb owns a Literary Society, and, if you live in 
 a suburb, you probably have not escaped member- 
 ship. You know the order of business. You gather 
 in a chilly parish hall, at eight o'clock of a chilly 
 evening, and exchange murmurous remarks upon the 
 evening's subject. Then the Chairman rises, passes 
 more emphatic remarks upon the evening's subject, 
 and concludes with : " And now, ladies and gentlemen, 
 I will call upon Mr. Parkinson to give us his Paper 
 on The Nobler Aspects of Lord Byron ; and as he 
 is so well known among us as a serious student of 
 that immortal singer, I am sure we are about to 
 pass a very pleasant — and, I may say, profitable — • 
 evening. Mr. Parkinson ! " 
 
 The Chairman subsides ; you wriggle after a
 
 FORTIS GREEN 59 
 
 comfortable position on your hard, straight-backed 
 chair, and Mr. Parkinson, with a nervous cough, 
 delivers to the Myrtle Park Literary Society, in 
 reedy, complacent tones, his considered judgment 
 on Byron. 
 
 The audiences of these societies are a mixed lot. 
 The chairman is the curate ; Mr. Parkinson, the 
 platform hero of the evening, is a cashier at one 
 of the local banks ; and the regular attendants are 
 elderly women, of means and no occupation, elderly 
 men who have retired from business and now sort 
 " intellectual " interests with gardening and golfing ; 
 and youthful clerks, typists, artisans, shop assistants 
 — all bent on self-improvement, and some of them 
 on the practice of letters. 
 
 They are to be found in every suburb — the same 
 types forming the same groups, driven by the same 
 motives. Every week, during the Autumn season, 
 they meet ; and to the Church Hall and the Public 
 Library they flock with sleek delight to hear — not 
 Sir Sidney Lee on Shakespeare, or Mr. William 
 Archer on Ibsen, or Professor Arthur Thomson on 
 Natural Historj^ or Mr. Edmund Gosse on French 
 Literature, or Miss Rebecca West on the Higher 
 Criticism — but Mr. Parkinson, Mr. Wilkins, Miss 
 Diddlums on these subjects. 
 
 The bulk of the audience, the dabblers in the 
 stream of literature, stand on the banks, gazing 
 humbly upon those who have waded farther, and
 
 60 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 catching eagerly all that is tossed to them — the 
 worn platitudes upon the worn novelists and essayists, 
 the cobbled summaries of the messages of the 
 philosophers, the solemn introductions to the beauties 
 of established poets. But to the pupils and the 
 teachers alike, these things are shockingly new. 
 Neither pupil nor teacher is aware that they have 
 been discovered before and that the self-same 
 comments have been passed many, many times by 
 others. The lecturer, on his side, does not care to 
 know whether his audience has ever heard of Walter 
 Pater or Frangois Villon, or Croce. If he has chosen 
 one of those subjects for his text, he will lecture on 
 it ; and the audience, in their turn, will listen to 
 him, because it is an " intellectual " subject ; and 
 they will go home and read about it, so that, if he 
 brings it forth again, they may be able to annoy 
 his complacent bearing towards them by a few 
 pointed references. 
 
 Apart from the meetings, the members exchange 
 books and opinions with one another. The earnest 
 ones, young and old, get together and arrange to 
 read one book during the winter evenings, and to 
 exchange letters on its moral and artistic value. 
 I wonder whether Mr. Gibbon would have read with 
 pleasure the letters that were exchanged in Myrtle 
 Park last winter on his ponderous " Decline and 
 Fall " ; whether Lord Byron would have been 
 interested in the letters that followed Mr, Parkinson's
 
 FORTIS GREEN 61 
 
 discourse on his " Nobler Aspects " ; whether Lord 
 Tennyson would have growled or grinned at the 
 correspondence arising from a reading by six Myrtle 
 Parkers of " The Princess," in the course of which 
 its Ethical Teaching was soberly discussed ; and 
 whether Miss Jane Austen would not have been 
 astonished at the high moral purpose which these 
 letter-writers discerned in " Pride and Prejudice " ? 
 
 The Papers are usually written and delivered by 
 the young ones — solemnly for the most part, with 
 an occasional elephantine jocosity, as one not at 
 ease in Zion. All are yearning to " write," and 
 they use the society as a training-ground for a 
 trial run of their efforts at the essay. Each has 
 his turn. The young labourer, the neat clerk, the 
 spinster typist — each is called upon for a Paper ; 
 and on the platform, whatever social distinctions 
 sever them elsewhere, they tread common ground. 
 Nervousness overcomes them, and they strive to 
 master it in the manner of their respective types ; 
 either by extreme diffidence or by dictatorial emphasis. 
 Some stutter and stumble, like Charles Lamb ; and 
 some roar and shock, like Roosevelt. 
 
 Yes, you may smile at them and their intellectual 
 adventures, but you must not laugh. The Literary 
 Society is as serious to them as the Royal Society 
 is to others. You see, they are all on the outside 
 of things. It is as stimulating to them to hear 
 their Curate read a Paper on " Th« Pilgrim's Pro-
 
 62 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 gress," as for you to hear Quiller-Couch on Style, 
 or Professor Gilbert Murray on Euripides ; both 
 you and they are listening to One Who Knows. 
 Their Society is a peep through the gates of the 
 garden of the mind. They want to be in it, and 
 their leaders hold the key. They are the hangers-on 
 of literature. They mess about with it, fumbling, 
 without understanding, among its stores. 
 
 They are, to the informed bookman, as a baby 
 with a box of paints is to the accomplished artist. 
 But they have communal joys which the greater 
 book-world never tastes. The excitement when one 
 of them gets a poem into the local paper ! The 
 hysteria of congratulation when one gets some- 
 thing accepted and paid for by a real bookstall 
 magazine ! 
 
 " I will now ask Mr. Stamford Hill to give us his 
 Paper on ' William Blake Considered as a Social 
 Reformer.' You have all read Mr. Hill's masterly 
 essay on Seaside Amusements in the current issue 
 of the Holiday Magazine, and I am sure we shall 
 listen with the deepest interest to a contributor to 
 this popular magazine." 
 
 No jealousy ; no bickering. Honest congratula- 
 tions on the performance, with a reserved intent to 
 surpass it. Wh}^ so many elders are found in these 
 societies, I do not know. They never contribute a 
 word to the discussions ; and it is certain that no 
 Paper has ever shocked them into thought or roused
 
 FORTIS GREEN 68 
 
 them to an opinion. I think it is that they feel 
 they have missed some of the finer things, and as 
 Myrtle Park is their world, they wish to mix with 
 the intellectual set of that world. 
 
 " I always hke to hear anything about books," 
 says Mrs. Chomley Parke, stout and " comfortably 
 off." " I think books are so interesting, don't you ? 
 Are you fond of poetry ? I am." 
 
 The Society is, to her, the pivot of modern culture. 
 The lecturers are those interesting people — people 
 who have " done things." Alas, it is little that they 
 have done. The purpose is there, but the achieve- 
 ment. . . . You may, if you hke, call it waste of 
 effort, misdirected energy on their part. You may 
 say that here is a thoroughly efficient bank clerk, 
 fully knowing his job, with every prospect of advance- 
 ment, spending the best of his brains in an effort 
 to become a mediocre essayist. You may point to 
 the capable manageress of a business staff turning 
 from the work that she can do to vain attempts 
 at work that she never will be able to do. Yet 
 therein they find their happiness. So who dare 
 complain ? 
 
 The printing of a set of verses (without payment) 
 in the local journal is a greater joy to the little 
 manageress than any vast success in her own business. 
 And the young bank clerk draws greater satisfaction 
 from appearing on an obscure platform and deliver- 
 ing his judgment on Byron to a few of his neighbours,
 
 64 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 than he would draw from a sudden appointment to 
 the managership of the Bank of England, Each of 
 them has that slim ability to construct verses and 
 phrases which, in George Wyndham's shrewd words, 
 savours rather of deportment than of poesy ; and 
 because of it they become impatient of the work 
 that they do so well, and beat vainly at gates that 
 will never open to them. 
 
 Yet the effort is not wholly wasted. It brings 
 them happiness and something more. It gives them 
 the joy of books. It affords them the example of 
 stronger characters. It teaches them self-expression 
 and exercises their mental processes. It puts them 
 through the discipline of concentrated thought. I 
 am sure that Professor Gilbert Murray spends no 
 greater care on the preparation of his lectures than 
 does Mr. Parkinson on the preparation of his Papers 
 for the Myrtle Park Literary Society. Such applica- 
 tion and hard labour, bringing no material reward, 
 compel admiration ; and while many thousands 
 flock nightly to witness the antics of maladroit acro- 
 bats reflected from a machine to a white curtain, 
 I prefer to listen to the stumbhng epithets and the 
 unconscious plagiarisms by which Mr. Parkinson 
 introduces me to Byron. 
 
 But Fortis Green is waiting to be inspected. 
 
 It chanced, on my visit to Fortis Green, that I 
 fell in with a learned B.A.Cantab., whose confessed 
 enthusiasms were his allotment and his beer. Of
 
 FORTIS GREEN 65 
 
 Xenophon and Pliny he spoke as some men speak 
 of Mr. Lloyd George, With him I went on a Seeing- 
 Fortis-Green tour. I " rubbered." I saw the 
 police-station, the fire-station, and the new garage 
 with its public clock. 
 
 I saw his allotment. I listened, like a good tourist, 
 to the madrigals he made upon his marrows, and to 
 his lyrical outbursts upon the opulent beginnings of 
 his broad beans. I saw the home of Mr. Edwin 
 Drew, the poet. I saw Coldfall Wood. Then he 
 showed me " Dolly's," and all my interest in the 
 architectural and sylvan beauties of Fortis Green 
 was captured by the fauna of the district. 
 
 Will you believe that in one small enclosed space, 
 seven feet wide by two feet deep, I met a retired 
 Army man, who was with Burnaby on his ride to 
 Khiva ; a man who was with Beresford at Alexandria ; 
 a man who had hobnobbed with those almost legen- 
 dary figures — George Leybourne, the Great Vance, 
 Jolly John Nash, and " The Perfect Cure " — a swarthy 
 Arabian, who kept a " general " shop ; a retired 
 Scotland Yard detective ; an ancient mariner who 
 had many times wind-jammed his way around the 
 world ; a truly staff-captain in full war-paint and 
 red tabs, who carried a savoury bag of fish-and-chips, 
 and ate from it ; and " Uncle Frank " ? 
 
 Perhaps you will not believe it. As I said above, 
 I can hardly beheve it myself. Yet I know it hap- 
 penecl, For I met the staff-captain in town a day 
 
 5
 
 66 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 or two ago, and he gave me directions for discovering 
 the fish-shop where he had made his purchases, and 
 spoke of it as selling the best fried fish in or out of 
 London. Yes, he did. I dare say I met only a 
 few of the delightful lads of this northern village ; 
 no doubt there are many more. But with the arrival 
 of " Uncle Frank," the walls of the cabin-saloon 
 began to crack, and the air began to grow mephitic, 
 and ribs tender. 
 
 I began to wonder whether the quaintest originals 
 in London had agreed to settle at Fortis Green ; 
 or whether there was something in the air of Fortis 
 Green that changed a normal, dull man, making his 
 home there, into an original. I think it must 
 be the air. I am usually voted pretty dull company 
 in the places I frequent : but on the occasion of my 
 visit to Fortis Green, I was given, in this company 
 of drolls, top marks as a merry fellow. 
 
 " Dolly's " bar is aptly named. In floor-space 
 and cubic space it is the kind of bar you would find 
 in a doll's house — if doll's-houses had bars. Every- 
 thing is in miniature, except the tankards and the 
 conversation. Conversation here is Brobdingnagian. 
 This is compulsory, for two aged canaries hang in 
 cages above the saloon. Many years have they been 
 there, effectively obstructing, with their piercing 
 voices, all coherent conversation. Often have 
 serious debaters of affairs expressed the pious wish 
 that some hungry generation would tread them
 
 FORTIS GREEN 67 
 
 down ; but in Fortis Green everybody is so well 
 fed that the immortal birds are in no peril. 
 
 The prime character of the district, I think, is 
 " Uncle Frank." By his appearance and behaviour, 
 you would say that a star danced when he was born. 
 By his conversation, you would say that he was a 
 Senior Wrangler. He will discuss with you the 
 metaphysical basis of criticism, the influence of 
 geography upon history, the education of women, 
 and what's good for Goodwood. He is the leader 
 of all spontaneous goings-on, and a reference-book 
 for all arguments. He is the bright-eyed Tom-and- 
 Jerry of the place, who, with true avuncular gesture, 
 leads the lads into mischief, and, when it is done, 
 sees home his putative, obstreperous nephews. 
 Although old enough to know better, he regards 
 life as a beano. In a hard-worked, but efficient 
 phrase — he is the Hfe and soul of the party. He 
 alone could bail Fortis Green from the horrid charge 
 of suburbanism, this ingenious farceur, this esptegle, 
 this Ariel of the tempestuous coat-tails. 
 
 In five minutes he had adopted me as his nephew, 
 and if your official uncles are crusty and pernickety, 
 send me a fine, and I'll introduce you to an Uncle 
 who, I know, will Unc. as perfectly as the jolly 
 Uncle of your schooldays. It was at his request 
 that I wrote the lines that follow. He had asked 
 for a song, and I can't sing ; so I made this rondeau, 
 which he sang to an impromptu melody, to the
 
 68 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 acute trepidation of the canaries. Unfortunately, 
 they survived it : 
 
 AT FORTIS GREEN 
 
 At Fortis Green the boys display 
 
 The joy of living all the day. 
 
 They drink their beer, and laugh and sing, 
 
 And carry on like anything, 
 
 Nor care a damn what people say. 
 
 Let others go in garb of grey, 
 And make November of their May ; 
 The pleasure's theirs. It's always Spring 
 
 At Fortis Green. 
 
 They show no shame at being gay, 
 These folk — they're always out to play. 
 And if you'd like to have your fling. 
 And lark about like Cole, the King, 
 Don't go to Paris. Come and stay 
 
 At Fortis Green.
 
 EDMONTON 
 
 IT is usually difficult to traverse one London 
 suburb without passing another's boundaries; 
 so cunningly^ washed-in are their meeting 
 points. You cannot walk round Stockwell without 
 unwittingly trespassing on Clapham ; and often 
 when you think you are at Manor Park you are 
 treading the pavements of Forest Gate. Neverthe- 
 less, if your perceptions be reasonably acute, you 
 are not long in discovering that you have entered 
 a new country. There are subtle differences to be 
 noted in dress, deportment and language ; in the 
 aspects of the shops, the prices of the produce, and 
 the manner of the tradesmen to their patrons. The 
 fashions of Stamford Hill are never the fashions of 
 Lee Green. Although Stoke Newington adjoins 
 Kingsland, you could not mistake the one for the 
 other. There is a type of face endemic to Hackney, 
 whose people, on their part, find a strangeness in the 
 demeanour of the man from Lavender Hill. The 
 girls who parade Electric Avenue, Brixton, are as 
 different in their qualities of charm and tempera- 
 ment from the girls of Grand Parade, Muswell Hill, 
 as are the girls of Seville from the girls of Trondhjeni. 
 
 69
 
 70 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Moving from one suburb to the other, then, I 
 reach all the excitements of being " abroad." These 
 strangers are driven by much the same motives 
 as myself. They are buying cabbages and selling 
 poisoned American meat, and going home to meals, 
 and lining up for the show at the Electric Pavihon ; 
 yet one cannot acknowledge them as one's own 
 people. They are foreigners. They know nothing 
 of my little corner. They do not know my High 
 Street, or the baked potato man who has held a 
 corner pitch for fifteen years, or the new store that 
 has just opened with a tea room. They know 
 nothing of the fury that is beating about the head 
 of our progressive Councillor who has proposed an 
 increase of expenditure on our public places ; and 
 they would respond with no fervour to any comment 
 of mine on the deplorable dilapidation of the tram- 
 lines at the junction. 
 
 Though the main road of Tottenham flows natu- 
 rally into the main road of Edmonton, the traveller 
 cannot come unknowingly to Edmonton. They are 
 severed from each other by a parting of the ways, 
 which is actually marked Tottenham Boundary ; 
 and at this point, High Road, Tottenham, becomes 
 Fore Street, Edmonton. 
 
 The shop numbers of Tottenham mount grandly 
 into the nine hundreds, and the solitary pedestrian 
 beguiles his journey by speculating on their reaching 
 the thousand. Alas ! they do not achieve it. Finding
 
 EDMONTON 71 
 
 that they are approaching Edmonton, they become 
 tired — they have my sympathy here — and give up 
 the struggle at 920. 
 
 At once the serene Georgian residences of Totten- 
 ham — serene even in their present fallen estate of 
 workshop and factory — give place to the agitated 
 architecture of the mid-nineteenth century, wherein 
 the Gothic influence of Albert battles with the 
 classicism of Victoria. 
 
 Within the gates of Edmonton, I first sought out 
 that famous tavern, " The Bell," I had heard 
 about that, and had been recalling the stanzas of 
 " John Gilpin " on the way. When I had found 
 it, I wished I had not. True, it stands on the corner 
 of a road, named Gilpin Grove, but it is a miserable, 
 draggle-tailed road, with nothing of credit or 
 renown about it. 
 
 As for " The Bell " itself, it is a cracked and 
 battered old " Bell," a shabby copy of an East End 
 pub. From it I received the first of many shocks 
 of dismay that Edmonton gave me. After noting 
 the preservation of W. A. Eaton in Tottenham 
 shop-windows, I looked naturally for something 
 that should celebrate the memory of the poet who 
 celebrated the house : at least a portrait of Cowper, 
 or a print of the house as it was, or an illustration 
 of the poem. But no ; the owners ignore the man 
 whose verses send pilgrims to their counters. The 
 walls of the saloon bar bear only a coloured print
 
 72 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 of Victoria the Great and Good, and a discoloured 
 cutting from an Illustrated London News of, I think, 
 eight hundred years back. 
 
 I respectfully draw the attention of the landlords 
 to this matter, if, as I believe, it lies within their 
 province. The local authorities, less boorish in 
 behaviour, have named two roads in association with 
 Cowper ; Lamb's house. Bay Cottage, in Church 
 Street, is, as it were, ear-marked for consideration ; 
 and Keat's association with Edmonton, where he 
 served his apprenticeship to the chemist, is suitably 
 recorded in the Library. 
 
 " The Bell," let me add, is not alone in this cavalier 
 treatment of its hero and benefactor. There are 
 many taverns around London whose owners are so 
 lacking in grace that they perceive not the grace 
 in others. Town Halls and PubHc Libraries always 
 make some effort to decorate their walls with old 
 topographical prints, old portraits of local worthies, 
 etc., but how many people, passing through a district, 
 turn to its Town Hall or PubHc Library ? These 
 attempts at celebration should rightly be supple- 
 mented by the owners of public places to which 
 transient arrivals do go, such as taverns, restaurants, 
 and tea-shops. In my own suburb, Highgate, are 
 half-a-dozen old inns, each with a history and a 
 long line of famous names in association with times 
 past. Yet only one of these, " The Woodman," 
 makes the slightest attempt at preserving the
 
 EDMONTON 73 
 
 traditions and the spirit of the house. There is 
 " The Flask/' near the Grove, where Coleridge 
 resided. Coleridge frequently visited " The Flask," 
 with parties of his visitors — Lamb, HazHtt, Southey, 
 Haydon — and Hogarth made many studies here. 
 Yet the bars contain not one reference to this com- 
 pany ; no old prints of the village ; no relic of early 
 days ; no link with the honourable customers of 
 years gone. At " The Bull," on North Hill, George 
 Morland stayed for many months, and painted 
 pictures in settlement of his bills. Not so much as 
 the cheapest oleograph of a Morland picture in its 
 bar. The Gate-house on the Hill has in its lounge 
 a few old coaching prints, but no distinct record of 
 its past. The " Elephant and Castle " ignores its 
 rich story. " The Swan " at Tottenham has no 
 word to say of Isaac Walton, nor " The Peacock," 
 IsHngton, of its crowded and coaching days. " The 
 Mother Redcap " does not know that Samuel Pepys 
 was a visitor ; and when I told the landlord of " The 
 Spotted Dog " at Upton Park that during the year 
 of the Great Plague the merchants of the Royal 
 Exchange met at his house to transact their business 
 he said " Really ? " 
 
 Of Edmonton itself ; well ... I speak mildly 
 when I say that I was disappointed. I had heard 
 and read much of it. It has a story strung with 
 shining names. It appears and re-appears in song 
 and story and drama. And I never saw a place so
 
 74 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 crestfallen, so down-at-heel, so bereft of self-esteem 
 and so acquiescent in its degradation. You would 
 hardly think that it stood upon the highway to the 
 north. You would hardly think that it has shared 
 with Tottenham all the pageantry of the road, all 
 the changing colour of Tottenham's drama. You 
 would hardly think that the author of Endymion 
 lived with it ; that Charles Lamb lies buried in it ; 
 that Dekker wrote one of his merriest plays about it. 
 
 It has the like to everything that Tottenham has ; 
 yet in its possession these things seem despicable. 
 It has a variety theatre, as lugubrious in appearance 
 as its streets. Apparently this hall opens twice 
 nightly, and I suppose it has reasons for doing so. 
 Yet its people seem incapable, not alone of rejoicing, 
 but even of attaining to that spineless desperation 
 that shapes the moods in which the EngUshman 
 goes to a music hall. 
 
 The place smells everywhere of the second-hand. 
 On all sides one sees cast-off clothing, crazy furniture, 
 old iron and broken crockery. It seems to have 
 become a trollop through sheer lack of volition. 
 Fore Street is a long, long street of shops ; but on 
 the day of my visit I saw no shoppers about, and I 
 began to feel that I was walking in a haunted town. 
 It seemed to me that all the population of Edmonton 
 had turned shopkeepers — an appalling conception. 
 Or else the shopkeepers, driven to madness by the new 
 wave of economy, had murdered all their customers.
 
 EDMONTON 75 
 
 I called at one or two shops, just to solace 
 their owners in their loneliness, and found that shop- 
 keepers and innkeepers of this place were as unlike 
 the shopkeepers and innkeepers of other suburbs, as 
 Edmonton itself is unlike other suburbs. The joy 
 of living and delight in labour were absent. They 
 took no interest in their jobs. They were not shop- 
 keepers and innkeepers, because they liked being 
 shopkeepers and innkeepers. They were shopkeepers 
 and innkeepers from dire necessity. 
 
 By this forlorn array of shops and Albertan villas, 
 Fore Street straggles like a purposeless tramp to 
 Ponder's End. Along it, half-empty tram cars 
 grind their way half-heartedly to Waltham Cross^ 
 and all the way it presents the face of a drab — 
 sealed cottages, waste corner-lots, and flat, tousled 
 market-gardens, from which slinks the faint, gloomy 
 odour of cabbage. 
 
 And this is Edmonton. Edmonton, that, three 
 hundred years ago, was a busy country town many 
 miles beyond London, yet well enough known to 
 be chosen as the setting of two famous old plays 
 — " The Merry Devil of Edmonton " (author, I 
 think, unknovv-n), and Dekker's and Ford's " Witch 
 of Edmonton." 
 
 Here is wealth of story — Dekker, Ford, Cowper, 
 Lamb, Keats. And what docs Edmonton make of 
 it ? Nothing. It seems to say : " Leave me alone. 
 I know I'm an outcast. Don't bother me. I'm
 
 76 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 down and out." It has the demeanour and aspect 
 of a discharged convict. 
 
 One might find more of grace and soft outline in 
 a north-country mining village. Its moral atmos- 
 phere is bleak and unfriendly. I spent three hours 
 in its stark streets, and, though the day was warm, 
 I was soon chilled and fatigued by the flat, frigid 
 tones and the callous temper of the place. I wish 
 Mr. Nevinson would do a painting of its soul. I 
 think his obtuse angles would feel quite at home 
 with such a subject. — Yet it was happy — once. 
 Dekker says so, and pays tribute to : 
 
 The nimble-footed youth of Edmonton 
 That are so kind to call us up to-day 
 With an high morris. 
 
 Little of this remains to-day. The youth of 
 Edmonton lounge in premature senility at street 
 corners, and the frolic grace and gesture of Dekker's 
 times are no more. Only in Barrowfield Lane, by 
 the level crossing, remain a few scattered stones 
 of the original Edmonton — some gabled shops and 
 houses — that Lamb and Keats may have seen. 
 
 But one other echo I caught there : something 
 that, in my own mind, linked Edmonton again with 
 Dekker. At mid-day I looked about for nourish- 
 ment ; and, doing so, recalled a passage from Lamb 
 — " How you would pry about at noon-tide for 
 some decent house." In all these outer suburbs a
 
 EDMONTON 77 
 
 mid-day meal is hard to come by. The Good Pull 
 Up For Carmen and the afternoon tea-shop mark 
 their limit in catering. Therefore, I was surprised 
 and cheered to notice a house displaying an 
 announcement of lunch at is. 6d. ; and armouncing 
 it by a word whose very flavour is a meal, and 
 whose disappearance from tavern windows brought 
 dismay to many — " A is. 6d. Ordinary." 
 
 It is surely pitiful that a word that has lasted 
 from the time of the seventh Henry to well into 
 the twentieth century, and has gathered so rich a 
 bouquet of association about it, should be dropped 
 from the vocabulary of the streets. You may 
 remember how knowingly Dekker writes in " The 
 Gull's Horn Book," of "How A Gallant Should 
 Behave Himself at an Ordinary " ; and how largely 
 it has figured in English Hterature throughout four 
 centuries. Call it " table d'hote ", and all its savour 
 is lost. 
 
 Had the place been evilly dirty, and the promise 
 of the cooking a threat rather than a promise, I 
 still would have gone there — because of that word. 
 But it chanced that the place was reasonably clean, 
 and the cooking without cause for complaint ; and 
 the hour spent at that " Ordinary " remains my sole 
 pleasant memory of Edmonton. From its present 
 sorrows I hurried away to recapture its past joys 
 by reading again " The Witch of Edmonton."
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 
 
 STRAYED the other day without a map into 
 a wilderness of strange men and women. I 
 felt myself an alien, almost a pioneer, and I 
 began to wish I had obeyed the exhortation of the 
 old song and stuck to the tram-lines. But my 
 trepidations were without cause, I found the 
 natives harmless. They took no advantage my 
 defencelessness. They did not seem angered at my 
 intrusion. I was put to no peril. Nay, I was 
 right cozenly entreated. 
 
 Perceiving a small building that bore some outward 
 resemblance to certain buildings of my home-town, 
 I entered, somewhat delicately, to inquire my 
 best route to the highway. I had been inside this 
 place barely ten seconds, when I was re-assured as 
 to my venture. A patriarch of the tribe, whose 
 duty apparently was that of ministering to those 
 who called, gave me honorary rank and extended 
 the hospitality of the village to me in these words : 
 
 " Wotteryavin, ole son ? " 
 
 " Ole son ! " What a welcome to the exhausted 
 traveller in an unexplored country. I made suitable 
 reply to this affable approach, and soon learned that 
 
 78
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 79 
 
 I was in Summers Town, and was free to go where 
 I would about its precincts. 
 
 Summers Town is a dun, hapless, miry spot that 
 lies land-locked between Wimbledon and Tooting. 
 It seems to have been used by both as a sort of 
 overflow, and is the draggle-tail end of Wimbledon 
 and the tawdry beginnings of Tooting. Dreary 
 tramcars, shorn of the lustre which is theirs at other 
 points of their route, clatter sullenly through its 
 worried streets, seemingly sick at heart and down-at- 
 whecl. Throughout the sparse daylight they make 
 the main road more miserable by their promise of 
 " something doing ; " a promise which is never ful- 
 filled, for the natives do not use them during the 
 day, and nobody visits Summers Town to see the 
 room where Cromwell signed the pledge. Only late 
 at night and at early morning, when nobody is 
 looking, do they bear full and sleepy loads. 
 
 Humanity flourishes here, though. Ambition and 
 aspiration, desires and dreams, are carefully nurtured, 
 and grow the stronger perhaps by their hostile 
 environment. The children, the dogs, the allot- 
 ments, the little enterprises of the " mail-order " 
 sort, furnish apt matter for evening discussion. 
 
 " Ah, you oughter 'ear my gel at the planner. 
 She ain't bin at it long, neither, but she's making 
 a proper fist at it. Yerr ago she 'ad 'er first lesson. 
 Yes — yerr ago come Pancake Day, it'll be. And 
 now — why, she plays the Premier's Ballad and the
 
 80 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Ballot Egyptian — and, oo, anything. Seen any- 
 thing of ole George lately ? " 
 
 " Oh, 'e's all right. Doing a little in the second- 
 'and now, sort of side-line, y'know. And running 
 a nice little business in teaching cabinet-making by 
 post. Putting money away, too." 
 
 " Ah, 'e's got a business 'ead, ole George 'as. 'E 
 alwis falls on 'is feet. 'Ow's your finches ? Mine'r 
 a bit under the weather." 
 
 " Oh, mine'r a bit orf song, too. I say — 'ere — 
 'eard the one about the chap who went to Paris 
 an' lorst 'is ticket ? " 
 
 And so on and so on. You are probably familiar 
 with the elephantine jocosities and attenuated 
 witticisms of the suburban bar. " Gorisms," as 
 they are called in certain circles. I shan't explain 
 that word. You are all Gorists at times, even the 
 most brilliant of you ; but you will not understand 
 the word unless you have been admitted to a little 
 fraternity whose object is the detection of Gorism 
 wherever it manifests itself. 
 
 From Summers Town one comes at last by long 
 unwieldy roads to Tooting. It is perhaps worth 
 while turning aside to Wandsworth. Wandsworth 
 is famed for its gaol and its river, the Wandle, which 
 has never been known to freeze. The Wandle was 
 highly praised by Isaac Walton for its trout. It is 
 to-day often condemned for its scum and its smell. 
 The High Street of Wandsworth still has much the
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 81 
 
 appearance of a village High Street, and many old 
 houses still remain. In some of those alongside the 
 river were housed the Huguenot refugees, who started 
 there various industries, and built a church, on 
 whose site now stands the Memorial Hall. Dutch 
 settlers also made it their home, and carried on good 
 business in brass pots and pans of their manufacture. 
 
 It was at Wandsworth that the foolery of the 
 " Mayors of Garratt " was invented. Garratt — 
 now covered by Garratt Lane — was then a hamlet ; 
 and the idea of an annual election of a Mayor seems 
 to have begun with some local inn-keepers. The 
 candidates were usually street hawkers, eccentrics, 
 or cripples. Each " Mayor " received the honour 
 of a spurious knighthood, and the ceremony drew 
 crowds of " the boys " from town, and usually ended 
 in an alcoholic orgy. Sam Foote increased its 
 popularity by his farce " The Mayor of Garratt." 
 
 At the other end of Garratt Lane lies Tooting, 
 Yes, Tooting. I know what you're going to say. 
 You're going to be facetious, and remind me of all 
 the Pinero and Carton japes about Tooting. I can 
 hear you enunciating its syllables — Tooting ! Well 
 I will not describe it as a pleasaunce. No doubt 
 there are better places — Chelsea — West Kensington 
 — Bedford Park. But what else could Tooting be, 
 with that name ? It could not hold much of outward 
 or visible grace. Professors of nomenclature have 
 told us that the thing or person named borrows 
 
 6
 
 82 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 and develops character from the name. John just 
 has to be honest, and Cecil must be weakly amiable. 
 Gladj^s must be a flirt, and Mary sweet and placid. 
 Camden Town is ordained to generate Camden 
 Town-ness, and Cricklewood speaks of Helvetian 
 chalets and half-made roads. So, in Tooting, the 
 pilgrim finds what Tooting has promised him. 
 
 The very name speaks cold squalor, allotments, 
 grubby brats, and a dilatory vestry. And all these 
 things are there. At Lower Tooting, that is. At 
 Upper Tooting we reach the rarefied slopes of culture ; 
 villas at £ioo a year, fur coats, Pekinese dogs, and 
 weekly accounts with the baker, instead of cash 
 down. One thing only wounds an Upper Tooting 
 man more deeply than a letter addressed to him at 
 Tooting, tout court ; and that is, a letter addressed 
 to him at Balham. 
 
 Balham and Tooting hold much of cultural 
 association. Mr. G. F. Monkshood, of Hatchard's, 
 who lives there, reminds me of Defoe (who is remem- 
 bered by Defoe Road and Selkirk Road), Fanny 
 Burney, Sir Arthur Helps, Sir John Seeley, Thackeray 
 (as a boy), and, later, Christie Murray, Ridgwell 
 Cullum, the late Edgar Wilson, the artist, and B. W, 
 Matz, founder of the Dickens Fellowship, who keeps 
 there his wonderful and priceless Dickens Room. 
 May I also mention, among those present, two 
 Thomas Burkes — one, a singer, the other — well, 
 him you may describe as you please.
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 83 
 
 From Lower Tooting the road ascends gradually 
 to Balham, and again from Balham to Clapham 
 Common. Of Tooting, my pocket-guide to London 
 says (appropriately enough, on page 222) that it 
 stands on the Epsom Road, and is reached by train 
 and tramcar, and that the name is derived from 
 Teut, the heathen god. 
 
 This has a distinctly German touch about it ; 
 and, when considered with the ancient name of 
 Balham — Beige-ham — helps me to understand why 
 Balham was flooded in 1914 by droves of Belgian 
 refugees (who carefully avoided Teuting). They 
 appeared to regard Balham — or Belgeham — as their 
 own property, judging by the treatment they gave 
 to houses which were kindly loaned to them. The 
 domestic habits of the German may be frequent, 
 and painful, and free, but I fancy they must 
 have been acquired from the Belgians. Speak as 
 you find, of course ; and praise where praise is due ; 
 and I am sure nobody could outdo these particular 
 Belgians in their special line. 
 
 Balham High Road, the shopping centre, affords, 
 on a bright morning, a pleasing picture to the student 
 of statistics. Clearly the monitions of Father Bernard 
 Vaughan are not required in Balham. One would 
 scarcely believe that one small suburb could produce 
 so many bonny babies, year by year. At mid- 
 morning the pavement resembles the track of an 
 obstacle race, what with perambulators and push-
 
 84 THE: OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 carts, loaded with obese and complacent babies, 
 and other babies feeHng their feet around their 
 mothers' skirts. The man in a hurry must either 
 walk in the road, or have his trousers fringed and 
 frayed by the spokes of an everlasting procession 
 and counter-procession of His Majesty's carriages. 
 " Why don't you look where you're going ? Clumsy 
 great thing, you ! Diddums nasty old man knock- 
 ums pushcarts, then, diddums ? " 
 
 The shops of Balham are bright and bold, and the 
 shoppers don't seem to have done so badly out of 
 the war. If they have, they are keeping very quiet 
 about it. At Tooting, where the shops are humbler 
 and ill-stocked with poor produce, they don't seem 
 to have done so well, and they are not quiet about 
 it. The various bodies of ex-fighting men have 
 very active branches at Tooting. The shops alone, 
 by comparison with those at Balham, are enough to 
 make them active. On the analogy of the menagerie- 
 keeper's description of the wild cat, the case might 
 be presented something like this : 
 
 " We 'ave 'ere, ladies and gentlemen, the wild ex- 
 soldier from Wipers. 'E useter be a fine upstanding 
 young lad, eating 'is four squares a day and making 
 good money. Now, 'e don't make no money at all." 
 
 " Don't make no money ? How does he get a 
 living, then ? " 
 
 " 'E don't get a living. That's what makes 'im 
 wild 1 "
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 85 
 
 At Nightingale Lane we come to Clapham Common, 
 whose borders are so rich in ancient story that the 
 two books on Old Clapham have chronicled only 
 a portion of it. Across the Common, on the South 
 Side, the beautiful small houses built by Christopher 
 Wren may still be seen ; but at a distance they 
 are dwarfed by a block of gigantic four-storied 
 houses of the stately Victorian period. At one of 
 the Wren houses Thomas Hood received his early 
 education, and celebrated the school in his " Ode 
 on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy." In 
 another, Macaulay lived as a boy, played lonely 
 games on the Common, and attended the not very 
 beautiful church, of which he spoke with the freedom 
 of an old friend : "I love it ... I love even that 
 absurd painted window. . . ." I, too, have a soft 
 spot for Clapham ; for it was at Clapham, as a youth, 
 that I made my first discovery of literature, and my 
 first efforts at writing. There I gathered together 
 my first " library." I suppose you all possess a 
 hbrary ? 
 
 I don't mean those ponderous properties of the 
 wealthy, which arc housed in one sombre room, 
 having the appearance of a household store-cupboard 
 or a wine-cellar ; but the collection of books which 
 has grown under its owner's careful nurturing, and 
 is enriched by no more than two volumes at a time. 
 Its owner knows a delight from which the lordly 
 librarian is barred : the delight of reviewing his
 
 86 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 volumes and dilating upon the sacrifices by 
 which each was added to his shelves. Each has its 
 memories, and most fragrant are the memories that 
 cling to the parent-volumes of the collection ; those 
 hardly-purchased forerunners that record his first 
 efforts at book buying. 
 
 Most bookmen cherish these worn favourites. 
 There is a novelist known to me who now possesses 
 rare editions, full sets, fine bindings, and other 
 dainties of the bibliophile. But his dearest volumes 
 stand on the shoulder-high shelf by his desk — ^lialf 
 a dozen grubby volumes of the Chandos Classics, 
 from which, when held in the fretful toils of the 
 factory bench, he first tasted the good dry wine of 
 literature. 
 
 My own university was the Scott Library and the 
 Canterbury Poets ; and my earliest purchases were 
 Poe, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Wendell Holmes, 
 Cowper, Gray, and de Quincey. I was about sixteen 
 when I first " discovered " literature, and was then 
 living in Clapham and labouring, as a junior clerk, 
 in the City. It was near the time when the first 
 number of the Book Monthly appeared on the book- 
 stalls. By walking home to Clapham on two evenings, 
 and saving the tram fare, I was able to buy that 
 first number. Why I was moved to buy it, I cannot 
 say. 
 
 At that time the monthly illustrated magazines 
 and the weekly " home " papers had served me
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 87 
 
 very well. I suspect that I had a sneaking desire 
 to shine against the lumpy and threadbare minds 
 of my office colleagues who, I was beginning to 
 realize, irritated me. Perhaps I wanted to high- 
 browbeat them. Anyway, I bought that number 
 and read it line by line. At about the same time 
 T. P.'s Weekly made its first appearance, and that 
 also I bought. Then I started on my tour of dis- 
 covery. Mr. James Milne and Mr. T. P. O'Connor 
 together flung open to me the gates of the realms 
 of gold ; and through them I plodded, aided only 
 by an occasional sign-post which the good Mr. Milne 
 or the good Mr. O'Connor erected for my welfare. 
 
 My first purchases were poetry, bought with 
 foregone midday meals. I do not know why poetry 
 should have taken my fancy. Maybe one of my 
 guides made poetry his initial direction. Maybe 
 I thought poetry somewhat more " intellectual " 
 than prose. Anyway, the Canterbury Poets were 
 my first books. Each volume contained, at the 
 end, a full list of the series, and one led to another. 
 Instinctively I knew that Shelley was more con- 
 sidered than EHza Cook, and that Sir Thomas Browne 
 wrote better prose than Mrs. Henry Wood ; but 
 beyond that I was uninformed. 
 
 I bought without reason or judgment ; it was 
 enough for me that a book was included among 
 " standard works." A " standard work " was clearly 
 a thing to have, if only to shy at the heads of those
 
 88 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 who read the serials in their newspapers. I became 
 a guzzler of . literature. I wolfed it down without 
 mastication or assimilation. I was a book-hog. I 
 followed Keats and Shelley with Bret Harte and 
 Adam Lindsay Gordon. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 made one mouthful with Heine and Dante ; and 
 George Gissing went down with Otway and other 
 Restoration dramatists. 
 
 The times were good to me. The " Canterbury 
 Poets" were gd. each ; the " Scott Library" (prose) 
 IS. 2d. Grant Richards was just beginning his 
 "World's Classics" at is. Cassell's "National 
 Library" was 8d., and Routledge had a 6d. cloth- 
 bound series. I am sorry for the youth of to-day. 
 The cheapest editions are now 2s., and Charing Cross 
 Road has heavily revised its terms. The ill-paid boy 
 (yes, there are still some ill-paid boys) who has " dis- 
 covered " literature is now barred from it, or driven 
 to that sad counterfeit of book-delight, the Public 
 Lending Library. 
 
 I cannot here publicly disclose by what shift these 
 books were acquired. It is one of the things one 
 doesn't talk about. But at slow intervals I gathered 
 about fifteen "standard works," and when I wasn't 
 reading them I was looking at them. I would walk 
 about Clapham Common in November dusks with 
 de Quincey in my pocket. I would carry Chatterton 
 down Newgate Street to Holborn. I read Herrick 
 (The World's Classics edition) in the Strand ; and
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 89 
 
 Cheapside and Poultry, through which my office 
 duties took me every day, became interesting, because 
 Thomas Hood was born in Poultry. 
 
 I soon developed " opinions." Tennyson and 
 Dickens were good enough for those who didn't 
 know any better. You see, I had long been famihar 
 with them ; our school reading-books had sickened 
 me of them. Tennyson was a so-so poet, and all 
 sorts of people read Dickens and understood him. 
 Whereas, I was alone in reading Herrick and Marlowe 
 and Otway and Wendell Holmes. 
 
 This violent gluttony of books quickly produced 
 an uncomfortable feeling. It wasn't long before 
 something happened. At sixteen I wrote a short 
 story. And I sold it. A small " home " journal 
 called Spare Moments offered a weekly prize of one 
 guinea for the best story sent in. For three months 
 after its dispatch I heard nothing, and assumed 
 that it had been lost or not delivered, and forgot 
 it. Editors were kings, and I had gathered from 
 my reading of my hterary papers that it was sacrilege 
 to approach an editor on the subject of MSS. Then 
 one morning arrived an envelope and a cheque for 
 one guinea. 
 
 I rejoiced, not so much at the novelty of being 
 printed, as that I could now justify myself in the 
 eyes of those who misregarded my lust for " stan- 
 dard works." In my City office I was one day 
 surreptitiously reading the Book Monthly under a
 
 90 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 blotting pad. The head clerk returned unexpectedly 
 from lunch. 
 
 " What you got there, me boy ? " 
 
 " Nothing," I repHed. " Only one of the literary 
 monthlies." 
 
 " Literary monthlies ! " Mr. Milne should have 
 heard the torrent of scorn that ran through those 
 syllables. " Literary monthlies. You don't want 
 to waste your time on that kind of thing, me boy. 
 You want to read things that'll get you on. . . . 
 Here, I've got a book in my desk that's been of 
 endless use to me. I'll lend you that — it'll do you 
 twenty times more good than poring over that 
 kind of thing." 
 
 And he lent me a Manual of Office Routine and 
 Procedure. 
 
 Well, I was inflated by that story in Spare Moments ; 
 and half-shyly, half-swankily I produced it to him 
 in justification of my " literary monthly." 
 
 " What's this ? " he asked. 
 
 I indicated the story, with my name to it. 
 
 " Well, what about the story ? " 
 
 " Nothing," I said. " Only, I ... I wrote it." 
 
 He tossed the paper away. " Come, come, me boy, 
 don't come wasting my time with silly fibs like that. 
 You ought to be ashamed of yourself." 
 
 I was. I don't know why. But I was ; and 
 thereafter I brought no " standard works " to the 
 office ; or, if I did, kept them privily in my over-
 
 CLAPHAM AND TOOTING 91 
 
 coat. But I had begun. I had had a story printed, 
 and I had a shelf of sixteen poets and essayists, and 
 each week new poets and essayists were to be dis- 
 covered. Many times, I am sorry to say, the contents 
 of that shelf disappeared, sometimes to be replaced 
 by similar volumes, sometimes replaced by new 
 discoveries. But those first purchases are gone ; 
 they went, before I left Clapham, to second-hand 
 booksellers long ago, when the times pressed. I 
 have not now my Herrick and Poe, in the World's 
 Classics ; I lack my Shelley, Wordsworth, and 
 Keats, in the Canterbury Poets ; and I miss the 
 pleasant sage-green and gilt of the Scott Library. 
 They served me well, and herewith I give thanks 
 to their publishers who so lightly priced them. 
 
 To me, the most moving scene of Clapham's 
 history was the death of Hardicanute on the Common, 
 dim centuries past, after doing his duty too well 
 at a wedding feast. Perhaps that is why Clapham 
 is so well furnished with old hostelries. Of these, 
 the seniors are "The Windmill," on the Common, 
 with its old carriage-drive, and " The Cock," by 
 the Old Town, first built in the sixteenth century. 
 The " Plough " Inn, now a great junction for the 
 tramways, still has its old yard, hinting at coaching 
 times. This yard, once an inn 3'ard, was later the 
 stable of the old horse-driven tramcars, and is now 
 a garage. 
 
 My own recollections of Clapham go back to
 
 92 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 boyhood, when the Common and its many ponds 
 were my Saturday deHght. Another past deHght 
 — past, since the coming of the motor — was Derby 
 Night, when one went to the High Street to watch 
 the return procession of multifarious vehicles, from 
 the elaborate four-in-hand to the donkey-chaise, 
 comprising, between those points, the brewer's dray, 
 with upturned barrels, the coal cart, furnished with 
 the kitchen chairs, the cat's-meat cart, the country 
 wagon, the hansom, the growler, the brougham, the 
 landau, the fish-cart, the milk-float, the — oh, every 
 vehicle ever seen on the London streets, and many 
 that had been dug from remote yards where they 
 had rested since the railways began. 
 
 Then the High Street was a fair ground, with 
 squirters, ticklers, air balloons, all-the-fun-o'-the- 
 fair, long noses, Guy Fawkes masks, streamers, 
 paper hats — and " Throw out yer mouldy coppers ! " 
 Then, each returning party raked their minds for 
 some new device wherewith to brighten the road. 
 They changed hats, of course, and put some of the 
 harness on the old woman, and dressed the donkey 
 in camisole and knickers, and painted their faces, 
 and made genial discord upon those imported 
 musical instruments which are the voice of merry- 
 making England— the accordion and the mouth 
 harmonica, and— well, went mad in a way that in 
 these times is frowned upon. 
 
 Vulgar ? Yes ; so is Dickens ; so is Fielding.
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 
 
 THAT was a good day when I first performed 
 a task that I had long deferred : when I 
 tracked Green Lanes from its humble origin 
 at Newington Green to its end amid the vast plain 
 of Enfield Chase, Middlesex. It was a day in April, 
 and April was in the day. As I boarded the car 
 that was to carry me to Newington, the sun shone 
 through an austere breeze, and I said to myself 
 that I would have adventure. I was journeying 
 into a strange country. I would make abrupt and 
 hazardous acquaintance with strange men. I would 
 receive good messages from nameless bright counten- 
 ances. I would see new frocks, new hats on new 
 crowns of hair, new shops, new streets, new methods 
 of trade, new attitudes to life, new gestures ; and 
 I would enrich myself by barter of talk and courtesies 
 of the road. 
 
 Like every self-respecting suburb, Stoke Newington 
 is well-to-do in the matter of inns. When James VI 
 of Scotland came to London to receive the EngHsh 
 crown, he was met here by my Lord Mayor, and 
 the " Three Crowns," at the corner of Church Street, 
 stands as a memorial of that occasion. " The 
 
 93
 
 94 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Jolly Butchers," associated with an early Duchess 
 of Devonshire, is a good house, too ; but the best 
 of them is the " Weaver's Arms," a terminus for 
 the old-time horse-'buses, and even now not without 
 its flavour of whip and harness. Its collection of 
 early Hogarth prints shocks and dehghts one, so 
 rarely is such taste displayed. Your London land- 
 lord is usually content to decorate his walls with 
 gawky, banal devices of brewers and distillers ; 
 wretched process work, out of register, enclosed in 
 gilt frames as bold and bellying as an alderman. 
 It was a pleasure to sit among these prints : the 
 worst of beverages would drink well in such company. 
 
 As I sat, I remembered that in Church Street, 
 across the road, Defoe lived, and it is held, there 
 wrote part of Robinson Crusoe ; that Northumberland, 
 the young lover of Anne Boleyn, dated from here 
 his humble renunciation of the lady to his royal 
 master ; that Samuel Rogers was born here ; that 
 Mrs. Barbauld, remembered now by one poem which 
 Wordsworth envied, lived here as wife of the Presby- 
 terian minister ; that Edgar Allan Poe was here 
 at school ; and that it has two parish churches in 
 the same street. 
 
 I then went out and looked round. The soUd 
 houses of Newington Green still breathe a self-satisfied 
 Victorian air. They seem to fold white hands across 
 lace stomachers, and never to have heard of silk 
 stockings. One thinks here on Sarah Smyth, her
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 95 
 
 sampler, on silver tea-sets, on keepsakes, and amulets, 
 and Sheraton bookcases. 
 
 But in the High Street the air blows keen and 
 strong. The New North Road here shakes itself 
 free of the East End and becomes broad and spacious. 
 One has a sense of looking through the open window 
 of London. Here is a land of parks and greenery 
 — Mildmay Park, Abney Park, Clissold Park. Of 
 these, Clissold only is a park in fact. Abney Park 
 is a cemetery, named after Sir Thomas Abney, the 
 benefactor of Isaac Watts, whose Divine and Moral 
 Songs were forced into us in youth ; Mildmay Park 
 is mainly an array of villas, which, like the poetry 
 of Rowbotham, the modern Homer, are stiff, but 
 not unpleasing. The borough's general aspects are 
 wide, for Leyton Marsh, Hackney Marsh, and Victoria 
 Park lie on the east, between it and the crowded 
 acres of Walthamstow and Leytonstone ; and its 
 north-east looks upon Tottenham marshes and the 
 reservoirs. 
 
 It displays, hke most northern suburbs, signs of 
 good management. These districts are so far in 
 advance of those of the other side of the river that 
 they support a local daily — the Islington Daily 
 Gazette. They demand, too, and get good value 
 for their rates. Nowhere in the South will you 
 find boroughs so well-kept and garnished. 
 
 To the traveller from the flats of Shoreditch and 
 the dolours of Dalston its air yields a certain bite ;
 
 98 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 The very name Dalston has a cold, gritty sound to 
 it, quite out of harmony with flowers. I think they 
 must hold in their own hearts some secret source 
 of breeze and sunshine. Indeed, I am sure they 
 do ; for not without some such private hoard of 
 joy could they, in these ungentle places, remain so 
 affable, even cordial to the casual wayfarer. 
 
 The tradesmen of these parts sell their fruit and 
 vegetables at a penny or twopence lower than the 
 prices ruhng at Stoke Newington and Stamford 
 Hill : a fact which by itself conveys to the informed 
 observer, who knows one of these districts, the essen- 
 tial spirit of the others. So the knowing ones of 
 Stoke Newington board the car and come to Kings- 
 land and Dalston for cheap provender ; and the 
 tired shopmen of these markets, when they feel the 
 need of a breath of fresh air, take the car to Stoke 
 Newington ; an example of that interchange of 
 courtesies between suburbs which I am anxious to 
 extend. There, they may be blown free of the 
 dust of Dalston, and, from the top of the car, may 
 look across the shingle of roofs that sweeps down 
 to the green pastures of Hertfordshire. 
 
 There, the High Street by day is full of shops 
 and wheels, and sounding horns, and severe endeavour; 
 and in the crisp evenings it is a grand parade. 
 
 When Ciss comes home from typing, 
 
 And Tom has earned repose, 
 Then merrily sounds the tabor. 
 
 And merrily move their toes.
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 99 
 
 But there is a fly in the ointment. There is a 
 nasty something underlying the jam. There is a 
 rift in the lute. Stoke Newington's scutcheon 
 carries a bar sinister. Opposite Abney Park, and 
 just off the High Street, stands a hideous block of 
 buildings named Gibson Gardens. If ever you 
 hear that they have been burned down, you will 
 know that I did it. This building is capped by a 
 sign more hideous, reading : 
 
 The Metropolitan Association 
 
 FOR Improving the Dwellings of 
 
 THE Industrious Classes. 
 
 A few yards away a Female Guardian Society has 
 quarters. A Salvation Army citadel hurts the eye 
 on the right, and bands of thin-faced Brothers and 
 Sisters lurk near by. 
 
 Now what's the matter with the people of Stoke 
 Newington that they require such a deuce of a lot 
 of looking after ? Who inspired so many futilitarians 
 to direct their campaigns at Stoke Newington ? I 
 don't believe its folk are in such a state of moral 
 turpitude as to require the extreme ministrations 
 of such bodies. I would like to know whether these 
 people are here by invitation, or whether they are 
 intruders, hanging about with the object of inocu- 
 lating the less perfect with their own lymph of 
 perfection. Note the adjective in the self-advertise- 
 ment of the founders of Gibson's gloomy Gardens. 
 " Industrious " classes. Most improvers work in
 
 100 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 a wider sphere, and seek to polish and improve the 
 whole vast army of industrials. Not so the 
 M.A.I.D.I.C. Only the nose-to-the-grindstone man 
 for them, though if Cobbett and Sam Smiles and 
 other guides to success may be cited as authorities, 
 this fellow needs no external aids ; his broadcloth 
 merits will of themselves carry him to the Mansion 
 House. Nowhere have I seen a hundred square 
 yards so loaded with ugly well-doing. Why, oh, 
 why cannot man attain moral rectitude without 
 contracting the mania to mould all other men to 
 his pattern ? Stoke Newington seems to say to me 
 through these blazoned signs of virtue : " You don't 
 want to be improved, don't you ? Then you jolly well 
 shall. Just wait till we catch you. We'll learn you ! " 
 
 Under these uncharitable eyes I began to be at 
 first depressed, then alarmed. Suppose, I thought, 
 someone, oozing this improvident perfection, is 
 hanging about street corners to pounce upon stray 
 wanderers and improve them ? Suppose he nabs 
 me ? So I turned hastily aside, and darted away to 
 take another refreshing look at the Hogarth prints, 
 and to wonder why hard-faced virgins and morbid 
 missionaries never adopt the Hogarth method of 
 improving. 
 
 I was still inspecting them when a voice inter- 
 rupted me. 
 
 " Got yer 'oHdays, mate ? " The words were 
 snapped at me from the bar.
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 101 
 
 I always answer " Yes," when taken aback by 
 a question. I said it on this occasion. 
 
 " That's the style. Just a good time fer 'olidays. 
 In the City, I suppose ? " He might have been 
 giving me ten rounds rapid. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Ah ! I used to be. Couldn't stand office work, 
 though, Soon's I got me ticket, I started on me 
 out-o'-work Dole. Just drawn this week's. Want 
 to buy a stud ? " 
 
 I turned fully round then and inspected him. 
 He was a Httle stout-built fellow, with sharp lips 
 and tiny twinkling eyes, which softened the snap 
 of his sentences. The worse half of a Woodbine 
 was gummed to his lower lip. He was wearing an 
 Army issue civilian suit, and carried a little wooden 
 attache case. As our glances met I saw that he 
 was bursting for companionship. He stood stiffly 
 before me, arms down, and appealed. I responded. 
 
 " I've got quite a lot of studs," I said. " That 
 all you're carrying ? " 
 
 " All ? Jumping rabbits ! I should think not. 
 I got everything here," he went on, patting the 
 case. " Everything in the world I got 'ere. In a 
 manner of speaking, that is. . . . 'Ere, 'ave a look. 
 See if there's anything you fancy." He put the 
 case on the lounge, and opened it. " There y'are. 
 'Ave a look. That's my job now. No more office 
 for me. Something that takes you out. That's
 
 100 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 a wider sphere, and seek to polish and improve the 
 whole vast army of industrials. Not so the 
 M.A.I.D.I.C. Only the nose-to-the-grindstone man 
 for them, though if Cobbett and Sam Smiles and 
 other guides to success may be cited as authorities, 
 this fellow needs no external aids ; his broadcloth 
 merits will of themselves carry him to the Mansion 
 House. Nowhere have I seen a hundred square 
 yards so loaded with ugly well-doing. Why, oh, 
 why cannot man attain moral rectitude without 
 contracting the mania to mould all other men to 
 his pattern ? Stoke Newington seems to say to me 
 through these blazoned signs of virtue : " You don't 
 want to be improved, don't you ? Then you jolly well 
 shall. Just wait till we catch you. We'll learn you ! " 
 
 Under these uncharitable eyes I began to be at 
 first depressed, then alarmed. Suppose, I thought, 
 someone, oozing this improvident perfection, is 
 hanging about street corners to pounce upon stray 
 wanderers and improve them ? Suppose he nabs 
 me ? So I turned hastily aside, and darted away to 
 take another refreshing look at the Hogarth prints, 
 and to wonder why hard-faced virgins and morbid 
 missionaries never adopt the Hogarth method of 
 improving. 
 
 I was still inspecting them when a voice inter- 
 rupted me. 
 
 " Got yer 'olidays, mate ? " The words were 
 snapped at me from the bar.
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 101 
 
 I always answer " Yes," when taken aback by 
 a question. I said it on this occasion. 
 
 " That's the style. Just a good time fer 'olidays. 
 In the City, I suppose ? " He might have been 
 giving me ten rounds rapid. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Ah ! I used to be. Couldn't stand office work, 
 though. Soon's I got me ticket, I started on me 
 out-o'-work Dole. Just drawn this week's. Want 
 to buy a stud ? " 
 
 I turned fully round then and inspected him. 
 He was a little stout-built fellow, with sharp lips 
 and tiny twinkling eyes, which softened the snap 
 of his sentences. The worse half of a Woodbine 
 was gummed to his lower lip. He was wearing an 
 Army issue civilian suit, and carried a little wooden 
 attache case. As our glances met I saw that he 
 was bursting for companionship. He stood stiffly 
 before me, arms down, and appealed. I responded. 
 
 " I've got quite a lot of studs," I said. " That 
 all you're carrying ? " 
 
 " All ? Jumping rabbits ! I should think not. 
 I got everything here," he went on, patting the 
 case. " Everything in the world I got 'ere. In a 
 manner of speaking, that is. . . . 'Ere, 'ave a look. 
 See if there's anything you fancy." He put the 
 case on the lounge, and opened it. " There y'are. 
 'Ave a look. That's my job now. No more office 
 for me. Something that takes you out. That's
 
 102 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 what I went for. No hours. No indoor work. Just 
 go where yeh Hke, and pick up what yeh can. I 
 bin free munce on this now, and wherever I bin I 
 can always go again. When I was out at the front 
 I wrote to the missus, and I says I'll go no more 
 a-roaming, or words to that effeck. But when I 
 got back I sung a different song. Up an' down the 
 City Road, in and out the ' Eagle ' ; that's my 
 song now." 
 
 " It's a very good song," I said. " Do you sing 
 it all day ? " 
 
 " vSing ? Me ? I never done nothing else in 
 Frawnce. The boys wouldn't never give me no 
 rest. Listen." 
 
 He flourished an arm, danced a few steps, and 
 sang in a muffled baritone : 
 
 " Oh who will roam the streets with me, 
 
 From Strand to Camherwell ? 
 Oh who will buy a ring from me 
 
 To give unto his gel ? 
 I've diamond pins and solitaires 
 
 And all such things as these ; 
 And if I ain't got ivhat you want 
 
 You must be hard to please ! " 
 
 " There ! What d'ye think of that ? I made 
 that up meself. . , . Oh, yes, I made up a lot of 
 poitry for our corps magazine. Don't yer want to 
 buy a stud ? " 
 
 " Not at present," I said. " But I'll tell you 
 what," I added, for I had caught a sudden joy of 
 the fellow ; "I'll answer your song with Yes. /'//
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 103 
 
 roam the streets with you. I was just starting on 
 a roam when you spoke." 
 
 " Where to ? " 
 
 " To the very end of Green Lanes." 
 
 " 'Strewth ! Where's that ? Country ? I ain't 
 going to no countrified places." 
 
 " No ; there's no country until you get to South- 
 gate." 
 
 " Ah, that's all right, then. Any chance of doing 
 a bit of biz. on the way ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't wonder," I said. 
 
 " Righto. Then if my company ain't going to 
 inconvenience you in no way, I'll come with you. 
 Sure you don't want to buy a stud ? " 
 
 " Quite sure at present. But your case may be 
 useful before the daj^'s out." 
 
 " Good. If you can't book an order, you can 
 sometimes make a friend. 'Tain't often you can 
 do both. Now we'll close 'er up, and I'm ready. 
 Giss II fag, ole man." 
 
 So we started. We had fallen at once into easy 
 comradeship, without the diffidences and reticences 
 of nice people, and we went briskly across the Green 
 to the mouth of our road. We were of one mind, 
 and asked nothing of each other but light talk and 
 a swinging leg. Past Clissold Park we soon sighted 
 the huge towers of the reservoirs of the New River 
 Company, and the many-roomed villas of Highbury? 
 New Park, of the kind described by house-agents as
 
 104 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 " substantial," to mark them, no doubt, from the 
 baseless fabric of the homes of HoUoway. The 
 New River is that same old river which, constructed 
 by Hugh Myddleton, and financed by James I, brought 
 Myddleton an empty knighthood and material ruin, 
 and immense prosperity to shareholders. 
 
 The industrious William Howitt, in his Northern 
 Heights, tells a sorry story of the parsimony of the 
 company towards Myddleton's family. In the middle 
 of his enterprise Myddleton, having used all his capital, 
 appealed to the wealthy City merchants. None 
 would aid him. James came to the rescue and 
 advanced half the total expense in return for half 
 the shares. Once the thing was done, and its success 
 was assured, the merchants stepped in to buy. 
 Certain small grants were conferred on some members 
 of the family for some years, but soon these ceased 
 entirely ; and the statue of Myddleton at Islington 
 Green is regarded as sufficient token of London's 
 gratitude to the man who brought pure water to 
 the city. 
 
 From " The Manor House," where Seven Sisters 
 Road crosses Green Lanes, the way lies straight to 
 Harringay and Hornsey. Harringay, I learn from 
 the local guide, " is and has been for many years a 
 suburb with a distinct individuality of its own. 
 . . . Altogether, Harringay may be described as a 
 bright and cheerful suburb." In possessing an 
 individuality of its own it does not differ from any
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 105 
 
 other suburb. I confirm the " bright and cheerful " ; 
 though, if you come to Harringay by train, you 
 will alight at a station which it shares with Green 
 Lanes, and the view from the platform may damp 
 your simple faith in guide-books. But views from 
 stations are not a fair test of a town's charm. Think 
 of the view of London from Euston or Liverpool Street. 
 
 I quoted the guide-book to my companion. 
 " Bright and cheerful, eh ? " he echoed. " Well, 1 
 don't mind if it ain't. Put me down in the miser- 
 ablest place, and I'll guarantee to make it bright and 
 cheerful 'fore I finished with it. I'll set 'em alight ! " 
 
 With half-an-hour's acquaintance with him I 
 believed him ; and I suffered an earnest desire to 
 lead him at once to my own too stately and bourgeois 
 road, Shepherd's Hill, and let him set that alight. 
 Shepherd's Hill is even more oppressive than Bays- 
 water. It is a wide, clean thoroughfare, bordered 
 by bright trees. It has large comfortable houses, 
 whose sweeping front gardens scatter laburnum and 
 lilac blossoms along the pavements. It is open to 
 north, east, and south, and big breezes beat about 
 it. People ought to give thanks publicly for living 
 here. Yet never do you hear a sound from these 
 houses. Never have I seen man, woman, or child 
 enter or leave them. Never have I heard a voice 
 in song. Never have I heard a child laugh or cry. 
 Never have I seen a young man coming home late, 
 or a young girl with her boy. Not a sign of human
 
 lOG THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 life is to be seen, save tradesmen and their carts. 
 Hideous stillness broods over all. Providence has 
 given these people pleasant bread, and they accept 
 it with a scowl, as though it were a stone. That 
 mean, middle-class quality of " reserve " has led 
 its people to applaud, as something in itself admir- 
 able, a sulky demeanour towards the outer world. 
 What do these poor creatures at Highgate ? High- 
 gate, whose air was coloured and enriched by Coleridge, 
 George Morland, Hogarth, Lamb, Hazlitt, George 
 Eliot, Faraday, and Tom Sayers. There are plenty 
 of places whither these automata might take their 
 brutal refinements — Cromwell Road, Baj^swater, St. 
 John's Wood — but to Highgate, the field of poets 
 and artists who knew how to live and how to give 
 thanks, they belong as fitly as a Calvinist at carnival. 
 They are a disagreeable excrescence. 
 
 They are the middle-class ; and the middle-class, 
 in every corner, has for centuries been a drag on 
 progress. It has jumped with its well-made boots 
 upon all new ideas and very heavily upon all ideals. 
 The middle-class scoffed at the railway. The 
 middle-class refused to believe the motor-car when 
 it saw it. The middle-class ridiculed the idea of 
 the telegraph and of aviation. And the extent of 
 its hatred of art is disclosed at Mudie's and the 
 Royal Academy. You may have noticed that, 
 wherever the singers and the artists go, these people 
 of the lumpy minds follow and drive the artist away.
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 107 
 
 They have killed St. John's Wood. They have 
 killed Maida Vale. Slowly they are getting their 
 strangling fingers on Chelsea. There has been much 
 talk lately of a Middle-Class Defence Union. Believe 
 me, these people need no Union for their defence. 
 They arc quite capable of looking after themselves. 
 Wherever they have seen anything that better judges 
 have pronounced good, they have stolen it. In a 
 century or so they have stolen from the labouring 
 class more than the feudal lords stole in many 
 centuries. They stole for their sons Eton College, 
 Westminster, Winchester, and Charterhouse, origin- 
 ally founded for poor scholars ; and they stole fifty 
 other schools and institutions dedicated to the 
 impoverished. But from these stolen goods they 
 have derived little benefit. The vacuity and the 
 fumbling dishonesty that disfigure modern politics 
 is traceable to the fact that seventy per cent, of the 
 members of " my faithful Commons " spring from 
 the middle-class and its stolen colleges. 
 
 And there they arc, smug and smirking, on 
 Shepherd's Hill. I would like to walk down that 
 hill with a trumpet, a drum, a pair of cymbals, and 
 a megaphone, and shout beneath all windows : 
 " Oh, good people, look out from your screened 
 windows and rejoice. Come out of your doors. 
 Meet your neighbours in the roadway. Dance ! 
 Sing 1 Give thanks and rejoice for your wide 
 gardens and your open hill." But it would be
 
 108 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 useless, I fear. Nothing short of Bolshevism could 
 shatter that sarcophagus of torpor. They would 
 peer from behind their thick curtains, murmur, 
 " Disgraceful ! " send the maid out with a penny, 
 and return to their high tea. 
 
 So I took it out of them in song as we rested by 
 Finsbury Park ; and I handed the song to the stud- 
 merchant, who put a tune to it and sang it as we 
 approached Harringay : 
 
 On Shepherd's Hill the people stay 
 Inside their houses all the day. 
 They never laugh, or sing, or shout. 
 Or dance, or throw themselves about, 
 But make November of their May. 
 
 If they are tempted to be gay, 
 
 They think : " What would the neighbours say ? " 
 
 And so they lock the tempter out 
 
 On Shepherd's Hill. 
 
 You never see a child at play 
 Along this treed and flowered way. 
 I think some Calvinistic drought 
 Has dried the spring of childhood out ; 
 For blasphemous silence broods alway 
 
 On Shepherd's Hill. 
 
 At Harringay the scenery of Green Lanes suffers 
 a change. It becomes a Grand Parade with solid 
 shops and good-looking shoppers. Harringay seems 
 to be mildly prosperous. It stands between the 
 showy and the ignoble. Its note is bright respect- 
 ability, in pleasant contrast to the flat respectability 
 of Hampstead and St. John's Wood. As we saw
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 109 
 
 only babies and women on the Grand Parade, I 
 assumed that the male inhabitants work hard in 
 the city all day. Inspecting their women, I fancied 
 the men to be clerks, senior clerks, chartered account- 
 ants, and other types of the small fry of E.G. The 
 women seemed to be the decent little wives of men 
 who worked at work that need not wait on inspira- 
 tion, ploddingly, and took pride in their homes and 
 gardens, and " put a little bit by." 
 
 One thing I like about Harringay, and that is the 
 example in local patriotism that it sets to other 
 suburbs. Half of it belongs to Tottenham, the 
 other half to Hornsey, the boundary line intersecting 
 a dozen short roads of villas. But do you think the 
 inhabitants of those villas will rank themselves 
 with those of Tottenham or Hornsey ? Not likely. 
 They are of Harringay. The guide-book was right : 
 it is a suburb \\dth a distinct individuality of its 
 own. Proud of its lineage, proud of its appearance 
 in thirteenth-century records, it declines to surrender 
 its identity to those who claim lordship over it. 
 Before Tottenham and Hornsey were, Harringay 
 was so often mentioned in ancient documents as to 
 receive the honour of being spelt in six different 
 ways — sure proof of importance. Indeed, the name 
 Hornsey came into currency only through a corrup- 
 tion of Haringhea and Haringey ; and it is therefore 
 fit that the stout fellows of Harringay should defend 
 the style and identity of their venerable village
 
 110 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 from the encroachments of that modern upstart 
 Hornsey. At Harringay, where is now Finsbury 
 Park, stood that Hornsey Wood House, fam.ous in 
 the early nineteenth century as a kind of rustic 
 Cremorne. George Crabbe once spent the night in 
 its grounds with a copy of Tihullus, being without 
 means of obtaining either a lodging for the night 
 or a coach back to town. Its eel pies were good 
 and cheap, inducements which would lure any poet 
 to the house and lure his last coins from his pocket. 
 At Harringay, too, Gloucester was met by the Lord 
 Mayor of London on his entry into the city with the 
 little Edward, whom he had even then arranged to 
 murder in the Tower ; and in Hornsey churchyard 
 lies Samuel Rogers. That is all I know of the 
 past story of the district. I wonder whether the 
 Harringans, with all their fervour for the perpetuation 
 of their name, know more. 
 
 " Throughout these northern suburbs," said I 
 to my companion, as we passed West Green, " the 
 
 thrill of history falls upon you " but the sentence 
 
 was never finished. He snapped off its tail with 
 a roar : 
 
 Whom ! 
 When first I went to Harringay, 
 To Harringay did go. 
 
 Sing wo, my lads, sing wo ! 
 I met a maid upon my way, 
 Towards the hush-time of the day. 
 When thrushes sang in Harringay ; 
 
 Sing wo, my lads, sing wo !
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 111 
 
 My heart now lies at Harringay 
 Beneath the Autumn leaves, 
 
 Sing willow, lads, sing willo'w ! 
 With lure of lip and glances gay 
 That maid she led my heart away ; 
 She buried it at Harringay ; 
 
 Sing willow, lads, sing willow ! 
 
 " Where on earth did you get that ? " I asked. 
 " That's not one of yours." 
 
 " 'Tis," he snapped. " I made it up coming 
 along." I must have registered increduUty, for he 
 bit at me with " Awright. Don't believe me if 
 yeh don't want to. But if you know as much as 
 I do about folksongs and the semteenth-centry 
 song-books, you'd know it's easy to make up things 
 like that. Easy. I s'pose you think, 'cos I don't 
 talk grammar and got a Cockney accent, I don't 
 know much. That's where you're wrong, me boy. 
 I dessay I'm as well up in the semteenth centry 
 poets as what you are. I was alwis reading 'em 
 out there, 'cos they're quiet-like. They ain't so full 
 of glory and liberty, and patriotism, as the others. 
 They 'ad more sense. That's why I stuck to 'em. 
 I can give you orf 'and 'alf-a-dozen of George 
 'Erbert's this very minute. And Campion. And 
 Carew. And Suckling. Shakespeare I ain't read, 
 I confess. But you can't teach me nothing about 
 old Inglish songs. So I tell yeh. I come across 
 some of 'em yers ago in a old Leisure Hour, And 
 I bin studyin' em ever since."
 
 112 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 I soothed his ruffled feehngs, not by apology, 
 but by violent argument. I sneered at the seven- 
 teenth century, and quoted a stanza of Sedley's 
 " Fair Chloris " as rubbish. Twinkling with delight, 
 he opposed me, and snapped me up for a misquota- 
 tion. Then, setting his case on the kerb of Green 
 Lanes, he opened it ; and, from the miscellany of 
 studs, scarf-pins, trouser buttons, bootlaces, brooches, 
 bracelets, and cuff-links, he dug out a dowdy copy 
 of an anthology of Cavalier Lyrics in the little 
 Canterbury series, and planted a grimed finger on 
 the stanza I had mis-mouthed. 
 
 " Now, me boy, you quote him prop'ly, and see 
 if he's poitry or not." 
 
 He was happy again. I appealed for an armistice, 
 and we stood shoulder to shoulder above his open 
 shop, turning the pages, recalling familiar lines, 
 interrupting one another with " Yes, but, d'you 
 know Campion's ' There is a garden.' " . . . " Ah, 
 but there's a better one than that — Randolph's 
 ' Come, spur away.' Know it ? And there's old 
 John Donne — 'e's 'ere, too. Lovely things " ; 
 until I became aware of a gentle voice at my 
 elbow. 
 
 " How much ? How much, please ? " 
 
 I turned, and saw a nice old lady with a nice old 
 dog. 
 
 " I beg pardon ? " I faltered. 
 
 " How much are your bootlaces ? "
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO IIARRINGAY 113 
 
 Cavalier Lyrics was thrown into my arms, and 
 I was pushed aside. 
 
 " Bootlaces, lady ? I 'ave 'ere several lines in 
 bootlaces, lady. I on'y carry the best. I 'ave 
 'ere a very stout pair. Real mohair. Last a year 
 they will, lady. An' on'y eightpence the pair. 
 Try 'em, lady. Finger 'em. Try to snap 'em." 
 
 " Er — haven't you anything a little cheaper ? " 
 
 " Cheaper ? Cheaper ? Now lemme see. Ah, 
 'era's a cheaper line. Not mohair, but strong. 
 Strong. Sixpence they are. The rise in the cost 
 of raw materials, lady . . . you'd 'ardly believe. 
 What with transport as it is, and " 
 
 "Thank you. Til take those." 
 
 " Thank you, lady. . . . And a nice little favour 
 for the dog ? Nice dog, lady. I always 'ad a fancy 
 for Aberdeens meself. This little bit of amber 
 material, now — make a lovely neck ribbon for 
 'im. I could put that in at tenpence. Oddment, 
 I admit, but that on'y means you can't duplicate 
 it anywhere. Unique. Much obliged. . . . One- 
 and-four altogether. One-and-six — one-and-four — 
 twopence change." 
 
 The lady and the Aberdeen trotted away, and he 
 snapped the case close with a joyous click. " Good 
 old semteenth centry. If we 'adn't 'ad that row, 
 I'd 'a missed that bit o' business. . . . An' now, 
 what about eatin' ? D'you take nourishment this 
 time o' day ? " 
 
 8
 
 114 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 " I can eat eggs and bacon at any time of day 
 or night," I said. " But they don't seem to eat 
 publicly at Harringay. Can you perceive through 
 the eye or the nostrils any manifestation of the 
 existence of the table d'hote, the One-and-sixpenny 
 Ordinary, or the Good Pull Up For Carmen ? " 
 
 His little eyes flashed from point to point. " Looks 
 like a wash-out," he sighed. " What's that, though 
 — over there ? " He pointed down a side street to 
 a little corner public-house. " They got something 
 stuck in the window." 
 
 We went to it, and in its small window was an 
 almost illegible but promising menu, and I deciphered 
 saut6 potatoes, to which I am always inclined. The 
 odour of liver-and-bacon and fried potatoes and 
 stewed steak hovered about its doorway. We 
 entered the tiny saloon bar, and took a seat at one 
 of two long tables, and ordered. Above the clangour 
 of knives and forks and beer engines and cash-registers 
 rose the voices of the waitresses and the landlady 
 at the kitchen lift. 
 
 " Now, Bessie, liver-bacon- 'n-sooty potatoes. 
 That yours ? " 
 
 " No, mum. I had mashed with my one." 
 
 " 'Ere, Evelyn, 'ere's your boiled leg. D' you 
 'ave suet with it ? " 
 
 " No, mum. I got baked and sprouts on 
 that." 
 
 " Below, there. . . . Suet coming back. Make it
 
 STOKE NEWINGTON TO HARRINGAY 115 
 
 baked and sprouts. Bessie, you got a rabbit following 
 your liver ? " 
 
 " Well, well," said my Autol57Cus, as we sat at 
 meat, " I'm glad you brought me to 'Arringay. 
 'Cos I never bin to 'Arringay, an' I love going to 
 new places. D'you think I can get a picture postcard 
 of 'Arringay anywhere ? I'd like one to show the 
 missus when I get 'ome where I bin. Or a bit of 
 'Arringay rock, or coat-of-arms china, like. Eh ? " 
 
 Truly a fellow of my own shape. 
 
 " Yerce, I love going about. Going into shops, 
 too. Any shops. Oil shops and penny bazaars 
 specially. Ever 'eard the ole song about oil-shops ? 
 I 'eard it sung at a panto., when I was about so 
 'igh. 'Ow did it go ? 
 
 Black lead and clothes-lines. 
 Treacle, peas, and British wines. 
 Colours mixed for painting. 
 Pots and brushes lent. 
 Soap, starch and candles, 
 Flanders-brick and turpentine, 
 Pepper, glue, and mustard 
 Colza oil and scent." 
 
 Upon which we left the table, and made for 
 Wood Green.
 
 WOOD GREEN 
 
 THE beauties of Wood Green are not to be 
 taken in a random eyeful. Rather, a loving 
 search must be made for them. The careless, 
 bringing nothing, will bear nothing away. Entering 
 from Green Lanes, your first impression, at that 
 end of the borough, is of sad efficiency. There is 
 an air of tarnished newness about it that depresses 
 you. It seems raw, and a little blown upon. There 
 are no flies on Wood Green in the figurative sense, 
 but at the corner by the Wellington one feels that 
 the flies of North London have often gathered there. 
 Here, too, are open spaces, but spaces that just miss 
 the effect of spaciousness. One feels that these 
 are just building plots that have failed to attract 
 a purchaser. There are decrepit corner lots, shaven 
 of grass, that seem like open wounds. In the April 
 sunshine the red brickwork of the place smote our 
 eyes. Here and there are allotments ; and I know 
 of nothing that more quickly suggests squalor and 
 dismay than a few acres of allotments. 
 
 As we stood there, I think we both felt contami- 
 nated. Dolour gathered about us. Then, a yard 
 or so from our ears, a street organ exploded in a 
 
 116
 
 WOOD GREEN 117 
 
 tremolo ragtime, and the whole place became alight 
 and alive for us. With a shake of the feet we turned 
 our backs on the allotments and faced the Grand 
 Parade. 
 
 There we found colour, gesture, and brisk back- 
 chat between shopmen and customers. When we 
 saw ahead of us the Wood Green Empire and a large 
 Lyons' tea-shop, we knew that our first cut of the 
 place had been on the underdone side. We knew 
 too that we were on the Northern Heights. Wood 
 Green is a place for breezy " views " ; and, like all 
 airy places, it has been discovered by the philan- 
 thropic — not the improving kind ; the good-natured 
 kind — and here are Fishmongers' Almshouses, 
 Printers' Almshouses, and Watch and Clockmakers' 
 Almshouses. Oh — there's the Home and Colonial 
 Training College, too. We had not time to inspect 
 this last, and I fancy we must have missed much 
 entertainment. It must be exciting to see eager 
 young apprentices receiving instruction in the craft 
 of slapping butter and margarine into pounds and 
 half-pounds, sHcing cheeses, and reaching down the 
 Oolong, the Bohea, and the Pekoe. Its philanthropy 
 is not limited to the exercise of kindness by organized 
 societies. You have but to ask the way to such- 
 and-such a place to discover how ready the natives 
 are to help. 
 
 With philanthropy it sorts patriotism. It has its 
 Gladstone Avenue, even its Ewart Grove ; but these
 
 118 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 pious memorials of ponderous ability are immediately 
 relieved by a Moselle Avenue and a Jolly Butchers' 
 Hill. This latter is good, though in no social history 
 can I find any evidence that butchers were ever 
 jolly. To-day the term is so inept, that the authorities 
 might as well pair it with a Happy Taxi-driver's 
 Crescent. The Town Hall Gardens, with bandstand, 
 are bright and orderly ; there are the Nightingale 
 Gardens, where dancing may be had on light even- 
 ings ; and there is the original Wood Green itself. 
 Nor is this all : there are other oddments of pleasure 
 spaces. The High Road feeds the eye at frequent 
 intervals with these snacks of municipal green. 
 
 Wood Green is one of the few London suburbs 
 that lack recorded history. Pepys never saw it. 
 Queen Elizabeth did not sleep here. Sir Walter 
 Besant is silent about it. It is off the main North 
 Road, and has no old taverns or churches. No famous 
 men were born there. I find no word of it in litera- 
 ture. It has been ignored by the novelist, the 
 essayist, and the topographist. There is no Official 
 Guide to its " places of interest." It lives wholly 
 in its golden and romantic present. Its people 
 seem to be full-blooded, with appetite for adventure ; 
 for the L.G.O.C. find it pays to run 'buses from 
 Wood Green, N., to Shooter's Hill and Sidcup, Kent, 
 every day. You should see the natives on warm 
 Saturdays and Sundays, in their " best things," 
 with Johnny and Marjorie and Hyacinth and Maudie,
 
 WOOD GREEN 119 
 
 in their " best things," how they cluster about these 
 'buses, and clamber with many noises to the top. 
 They surely know how to go on a journey. I am 
 no miser of my emotional processes ; my strings 
 are always taut and eager to speak, to the lightest 
 caress. But never, I am sure, could I achieve the 
 vociferous delight that these good matrons and dads 
 wrest from their ride across London to the edge of 
 Kent. If fresh delight in simple things is the heritage 
 of the happy man, then Wood Green ghtters with 
 joy. They have an enormous capacity for surprise. 
 To these darlings the day's things are ever new, 
 ever affording novel aspects, wrapped in an inex- 
 haustible sheath of gowns. Such joy is never to 
 be found with the stupefied rustic or the highly- 
 educated urban. It belongs to those who fall between 
 the two : to those who can express emotion and have 
 not yet learnt that to express emotion is indecent. 
 Every noise they make is a thanksgiving for good 
 things ; and they are prodigal of thanks. So do 
 they get many good things and much joy ; while 
 the occupants of " substantial " villas, knowing not 
 how to praise, are left to eat their own peevishness. 
 Man lives by that exquisite sense of proportion 
 which we call himiour, and that sense is most largely 
 found among the impecunious. Authors, artists, and 
 dramatists, presenting humour, have always gone 
 for their material to the unlearned and the rude — 
 for these are alive. No great comedy or work of
 
 120 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 humour has been set among the well-bred and the 
 elegant, for these are afraid to be natural ; they can 
 only be vulgar in the worst sense of that word. 
 
 The simple toiler from the factory bench will see 
 more and gather more in a half-hour's 'bus ride 
 than some can gather in a trip round the world. A 
 poster, a bizarre frock, a strange building, a factory, 
 a bicycle accident, the deportment of pedestrians — 
 all come to them with the shock of a novel vaudeville 
 turn. Deep Homeric laughter is aroused by an old 
 man who takes a walk without a hat. The wells 
 of wit are tickled when a fat one scurries from the 
 path of the 'bus. They talk with large accents. 
 They cry aloud. They are spendthrift of expression. 
 Oh, they do so enjoy it all ! How they contrive to 
 preserve such appetite for enjoyment from the 
 clutching hands of factory, office, and back-kitchen, 
 is a question that no Fabian pamphleteer has yet 
 answered. I will not try to answer it ; for such 
 researches I have no mind. It is enough that it is 
 there. I am content to accept the fact of their 
 rejoicing, since jo}^ expressed is everybody's joy. 
 
 I wonder whether the folk who live in the costly 
 mansions of Shooter's Hill ever take the 'bus ride 
 to Wood Green ; and, if so, whether they go to Wood 
 Green as gladly as Wood Green goes to Shooter's 
 Hill. I doubt. I think I know mv Shooter's Hill 
 public. I think I hear them say : " Wood Green ? 
 Where the hell's that ? " — if a man — or, if a woman :
 
 WOOD GREEN 121 
 
 " Wood Green ? Wood Green ? Oh, isn't that one 
 of those North London slums ? " 
 
 Yet they might have great good of a visit to 
 Wood Green. I told you that beauty was to be 
 found in Wood Green, if one sought with the right 
 heart. I will discover it to j^ou. 
 
 At Wood Green is the factory of Messrs. Barratt 
 & Co., wholesale confectioners. 
 
 That alone gives Wood Green a seal brighter and 
 bolder than that borne by any other suburb. 
 Barratt & Co. are to Wood Green what Shakespeare 
 is to Stratford, Johnson to Lichfield, Mrs. Gaskell 
 to Knutsford, Coleridge to Highgate. I will not 
 say that they are not even an ornament brighter 
 than these. These others have given little joy to 
 children ; but when one thinks of the thousands of 
 dingy shop-windows in dingy by-streets of London 
 that are made lovely by the wares of the Barratt 
 family, so that they become very heavens to the 
 starving eyes of little girls and boys, the stupendous 
 vision of beauty that Wood Green has given to the 
 metropolis leaves one breathless. 
 
 Well I remember the little sweetstuff shop where 
 I could lay out my weekly penny in farthing's-worths 
 of the wares of the Barratts. Sumptuously stocked 
 was its window with coloured delights in neat wooden 
 boxes, the inside of the lids blazing with " Barratt 
 & Co., Wood Green, London," in multi-hued lettering. 
 There one would linger for perhaps half-an-hour,
 
 122 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 discussing with a friend whether Barratt was at his 
 best in his "all-sorts" at four ounces the penny, or 
 whether his "clove-sticks " at a halfpenny each might 
 not prove the more enduring. So, when I came 
 this day to Wood Green, I brought with me my 
 childhood fancy, which was a visualization of Wood 
 Green as one vast sweetstuff shop, where clever 
 men in large white aprons worked among miles of 
 barley-sugar, leagues of clove-stick, acres of cocoa-nut 
 toffee and almond-rock, and mountains of all-sorts ; 
 while Barratt & Co. — I always fancied Barratt to 
 be big and bearded and heavily facetious, like one's 
 best uncle, and Co. as a little fellow, spry and tricky, 
 and up to his larks — while Barratt & Co. did nothing 
 but taste their own sweets and order other men 
 about. 
 
 Wherefore Wood Green should be a shrine, the 
 goal of a sweet pilgrimage. I would like to see, 
 on May Day, all the children of London, rich and 
 poor, well-dressed and ill-dressed, clean and dirty, 
 parade from slum and suburb to Wood Green, and 
 there do homage to all the Barratts, and assure 
 them prettily of a continuance of esteemed custom. 
 I would not have them garbed for the occasion. 
 They should go in their daily habiliments, boy and 
 girl, boy and girl, two by two, a riot of colour and 
 patches, and lace and rags, as a tactful tribute to 
 the Barratt's " all-sorts." And I would Hke the httle 
 girls to carry posies of London flowers and fohage
 
 WOOD GREEN 123 
 
 to lay at the feet of the heroes, while the little boys 
 stood by and cheered. Later in the year there 
 should be a gathering at the Grand Parade of London 
 grown-ups who are still young enough to remember 
 their first suck at a Barratt sweet. I don't suppose 
 they would want to carry posies ; but perhaps the 
 gentlemen could have a whip-round and buy the 
 Barratts a case of pre-war whisky ; and perhaps the 
 ladies could knit them something against the time 
 when the evenings begin to draw in. 
 
 As the pedlar and I sat in the Jolly Butchers, 
 I made a lame song as my own contribution, 
 which he put to a tune and with many a clearing 
 of throat, writhing of the lips, and half- arm 
 flourish, sang aloud against much protest from the 
 barmaids : 
 
 / think I will go to Wood Green 
 
 Where the toffee-apples grow, 
 And in the darkling green wood 
 
 See the pear-drops glow. 
 I will build a house of almond-rock, 
 
 And fence it all around 
 With stout sticks of barley sugar 
 
 Planted in the ground. 
 
 I will bore for a spring of mineral wafer 
 
 Warranted to contain 
 No " deleterious matter " 
 
 To bring a morning pain. 
 I will have a floor of chocolate bars 
 
 A nd a Turkish delight settee ; 
 And Barratt shall put me to bed at night, 
 
 And Co. shall wait on tne.
 
 124 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 I forgot to include among the features of Wood 
 Green a large, four-square building of the type 
 described as " places of amusement." It is called 
 Alexandra Palace. It looks like it. It doesn't 
 amuse me.
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 
 
 BUT noon was well behind, and we had still 
 half our journey to accomplish. We threw 
 a leg, therefore, northwards, and I walked 
 joyfully ; for, in Victoria Station Yard, I had noticed, 
 on fine mornings, when my destination was the office, 
 fleets of motor-buses that were labelled " The Cherry 
 Tree." Often had I longed to be the driver of a bus 
 that went to the Cherry Tree on such mornings. 
 How his heart must sing, as he throws the power on ! 
 How he must snort, as he leaves the yard and blusters 
 through the crowds of luckless fellows who are 
 going to work ! Were I the driver, I would hark 
 back to the methods of the old horse-drawn affairs, 
 and I would chortle and chi-ike. Thus : " Now, 
 any more for the Cherry Tree ! Eightpence all the 
 way ! All the way to the Cherry Tree ! Now — 
 Cherrin Craws — Oxfer Street — Tonnumcaw Ro^ — 
 Kemden — Negsed — Finsbry Pawk — Woogrccn an' 
 Cherry Tree ! Come along fer the Cherry Tree ! 
 All in bloom to-day, lidies ! Now's the time for the 
 Cherry Tree ! Too late nex' week, gels ! The 
 Cherry Tree ! " And then I would burst into song : 
 
 Come follow, follow me I 
 
 Whither shall I follow, follow thee ? 
 
 To the Cherry, to the Cherry, 
 To the Soiithgate Cherry Tree.
 
 126 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 With the excitement of making a first journey to 
 the Cherry Tree, I suffered, too, the excitement that 
 is always born in me when on the Northern Heights : 
 the excitement of being at once on the edge of 
 London and the beginning of England. The fringe 
 of South London provides no such thrill. You 
 know too well what is before you : a few abrupt 
 roads — the Hastings Road, the Dover Road, the 
 Brighton Road — whose empty miles bring you to 
 the coast. These south-eastern counties are but a 
 landing-stage for England, which properly begins at 
 London. On these northern fringes you may in 
 fancy face a prospect of illimitable travel. Open, 
 flowered fields break the loose ranks of shop and 
 villa, outposts of the rich scenes that lie before you 
 on these noble ways to a hundred noble cities. 
 
 Bowes Park is Wood Green with its Sunday clothes 
 on. Wood Green is the original Jack Jones ; Bowes 
 Park is Jack Jones " come into a little bit o' splosh." 
 The exuberant vulgarity is here chidden and toned 
 down. Philanthropy and clamorous trade are con- 
 trolled. Almshouses are not seen, and shops are 
 few. It is what is called a residential district. 
 Pride is in the air here ; not an over-blown, pigeon- 
 breasted, tilt-nosed pride, but the sedate pride of 
 the humble, of those who will make the best of 
 themselves and their possessions, while knowing them 
 to be not of prime quality. The little front gardens 
 are neatly kept ; the little door-steps and door-
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 127 
 
 handles gleam and glisten ; the little wives push 
 little perambulators with nice economy of energy. 
 People do not to-day keep servants in Bowes Park, 
 and they look very happy. I am sure they did keep 
 servants in the easier days ; not one of those villas 
 then without " the maid." But now she never 
 bothers them ; they smile and go gladly about their 
 work with their own hands on the happy-go-lucky 
 principle. Mistresses and young daughters may be 
 seen every morning cleaning their own steps, per- 
 forming their own chores. The weekly turn-out is 
 a defunct institution. The drawing-room is no longer 
 a drawing-room ; it is an untidy room where one 
 can be at ease. If you call in the afternoon, you 
 may be kept waiting at the door until madame has 
 made her toilet and can decently appear. And a 
 happy chorus rises from a thousand tea-tables : 
 ' 'My dear, we simply can't find a servant for love 
 or money." 
 
 And in Bowes Park, as in all suburbs, they are 
 glad, yea, glad with all their hearts, though they 
 dare not yet give voice. For they never really 
 wanted a servant, and they never could afford a 
 servant. They had to have a servant. It was a 
 case of hypnotism, of " keeping up with the 
 Joneses." In my own suburb my establishment 
 was for many years unique and discreditable ; it 
 was the only house in Laburnum Avenue that had 
 no " maid." Being thus outside the pale, I heard
 
 128 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 and saw more of this servant question than those 
 within it. I was told things that were not told 
 to others. When Mrs. Delatouche engaged an extra 
 maid, and thus had a staff of two, I alone knew 
 the anguished searching of pass-books and the family 
 committees of ways and means that disturbed other 
 houses in the Avenue, as they sought to show Mrs. 
 Delatouche that she was no better than other 
 Laburnumites. Wherefore all are now joyful. They 
 look each other in the face. " Had any luck yet ? " 
 "No. I advertised last week, and offered thirty 
 pounds a year, and two evenings a week, but not 
 one reply." And the two liars part with smiles, 
 knowing that the collapse of the servant market 
 protects them from discovery. At last the hard-up 
 professional man has a socially legitimate excuse 
 for not burdening his home with the Unwelcome 
 Stranger. His wife can soil her hands and feel 
 that she is not losing caste. The atmosphere of the 
 house is brighter, the tone clearer. The maid in the 
 seven-room villa was always an excrescence. Hus- 
 band and wife could never discuss private affairs 
 without lowering their voices. One could never 
 leave letters and private papers lying about ; one 
 was always half-aware of the concealed presence of 
 the Unwelcome Stranger. To-day Mr. Laburnum is 
 master of his own house, and is discovering the 
 physical joy and mental stimulation provided by 
 boot-cleaning and brass-polishing. He feels, as
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 129 
 
 the Pilgrim felt, when the load fell from his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Bowes Park seems to be the work of one builder. 
 He has builded well, but, as he was making a town, 
 he would have done better to have expunged the 
 rural touches and worked for candid urban effects. 
 In two hundred yards of High Road you pass 
 Woodside Road, Sylvan Villas, Arcadian Gardens, 
 and Glendale Avenue. This, I suppose, is meant 
 to bring the happy country tone to the ears of youth 
 and maid, and lead them there to nest ; but as all 
 these roads lead into Wolves' Lane I think any 
 mating couple would show a preference for urban 
 security over this hazardous Arcady. 
 
 At Bowes Park, Green Lanes becomes once more 
 Green Lanes until it reaches Palmer's Green, where 
 it becomes a High Road. If Bowes Park is Wood 
 Green in its Sunday clothes. Palmer's Green is a 
 Bowes Park that has " got on." Large villas here, 
 desirable and commodious, with garages and carriage 
 sweeps. Dignified shops, with much glass frontage, 
 in wide streets. The air seems clean and cool and 
 still. One might be in a vast dairy. The tourist 
 who arrives on foot from the cottage gentilities of 
 Wood Green pauses as he takes his first breath of 
 Palmer's Green. There is an austere flavour about 
 it : a fine serenit}^ almost serendipity. In its streets 
 one becomes chastened, j^et not humiliated. No 
 little half-hearted shops here. No penny bazaars
 
 130 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 for my friend to " poke about in." No tupp'ny- 
 hap'ny haberdashers. No combined one-man busi- 
 ness of newsagent, tobacconist, confectioner and 
 barber. No barbers at all — hairdressers only. No 
 drapery stores or baby-linen shops ; but veiled, 
 contemplative establishments, with empty windows, 
 labelled Odette or Julie or Yvonne — ladies whose 
 presence in a suburb is a cachet of social rightness. 
 Folk don't let themselves go in Palmer's Green. 
 The word " jolly " is never used ; its synonym is 
 " charming " or " delightful." Children on scooters 
 proceed along its pavement with almost Chinese 
 placidity. Everybody proceeds. Even the butchers' 
 carts proceed. We pilgrims found that the stride 
 that had brought us thither dropped involuntarily 
 to a minuet step ; and by this step we proceeded 
 off our route to see the Cherry Tree at 
 Southgate. 
 
 Yet Palmer's Green is not moribund as is Shepherd's 
 Hill. People do enjoy themselves here. They do 
 not wear masks ; you may share their tranquil pleasure 
 in things. They can afford comfortably to keep 
 servants here, and they do keep servants ; hence 
 that institution as well known to the railwaymen of 
 this line as the Flying Scotchman, or the Cornishman, 
 or the Brighton Belle : I mean the Dripping Special. 
 My friend had sold a stud to a porter by the station, 
 and we fell to chatting about the district and its 
 notable charms, and about his work. Sunday was
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 131 
 
 a good day ; he was only on for the Dripping Special ; 
 when he got that away he was done. 
 
 " Dripping Special ? Oh, that's the three-thirty 
 up. The cooks' train. ... Eh ? Oh, I thought 
 you knew. Old Ernie give it that name. All the 
 domestics from the big 'ouses catch that one fer 
 town on their Sundays oft ', and they all carry parcels. 
 You know, little tit-bits to take 'ome to their people. 
 Left-overs from the kitchen and the pantry. Well, 
 you know what a godsend a good bit of beef dripping 
 is to a family of boys and gels, don't yeh ? Well, 
 from the smell on that platform before the three- 
 thirty comes up, they mostly seems to go in fer 
 dripping. And good judges, too. So Old Ernie 'e's 
 named it 'The Dripping Special.' " 
 
 From dripping we turned our minds again to the 
 Cherry Tree. You come to it by Alderman's Hill 
 (this must be Jolly Butchers' Hill risen to civic 
 honours), which borders a large natural public park, 
 with rich turf and a round pond girdled by patrician 
 elms. Children play here — in a gentlemanly way, 
 of course. Our day was well chosen. Some weeks 
 of sun and shower had loaded the front gardens 
 with the opulent bloom of rhododendron, lilac, 
 laburnum, chestnut, red and white hawthorn, wistaria, 
 and the smouldering hue of copper beeches. A few 
 wooden thatched cottages were everywhere 
 shouldered and bunted by the villas of 1914, and 
 did not seem to know what to make of it. South-
 
 182 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 gate itself seems uncertain whether to be a village, 
 or to admit the intruders and be a thriving and up- 
 to-date suburb. It seems to meet the intruders 
 without welcome and without hostility. " Well," 
 it seems to say, " you've got here, and you came 
 quietly and orderly; so we suppose you'd better 
 stay. The laws of hospitality forbid our refusing 
 you, after so long a journey. But please understand 
 that we cannot recognize or entertain you. You 
 must be self-supporting, and you must keep yourselves 
 decently in the outer courtyard. We don't like the 
 look of you. On the other hand, your behaviour 
 does not warrant us in packing you about your 
 business. So, if you continue in quiet conduct, you 
 can stay or go, as you please." 
 
 The Cherry Tree faces the village green, and 
 stands modestly back from the road, as a village inn 
 should. Its architecture is unremarkable. It was 
 apparently built on the site of a more picturesque 
 predecessor. But certainly it is an inn, and not a 
 public-house. Your nose tells you that when you 
 enter, for the bar exudes the rich country smell 
 that never can be counterfeited. It is drawn from 
 the wood that has been seasoned by decades of smoke 
 and human rubbings and the outdoor perfumes of 
 years. It seems to be compounded of the kindly 
 spirits of the past, as a promise of good company 
 and entertainment. No London bar, however ripe 
 in years, can produce that odour of welcome ; its
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 133 
 
 patrons are too numerous and too often scattered 
 to make a club or coterie. The appointments of 
 the Cherry Tree catch happily the tact of its atmo- 
 sphere. There are a few Rowlandson prints ; some 
 pieces of old pewter ; a long, low billiard room, 
 coaching pictures, and sturdy tables and elbow 
 chairs. From the curtained window one looks across 
 the green, and down the road whither go the 'buses 
 to Chase Side. And from the back you see Alexandra 
 Palace. It is impossible to escape Alexandra Palace 
 in North London, or even in Middlesex, Hertford- 
 shire or Essex. But there is happily little local 
 pride in it. The folk at Muswell Hill are much 
 more fluttered to show you the view of the Crystal 
 Palace from their " Green Man " on a clear day ; 
 even as those of South London are loud upon their 
 view of Harrow Spire when atmospheric conditions 
 are favourable. 
 
 It didn't take my friend long to sell a card of 
 studs and two tic-clips. This was done in one 
 minute. Then, having praised the landlady's beer 
 and congratulated her on the lovely country she 
 had round these parts, he presented her with a little 
 sachet of lavender, and stood twinkhng upon the 
 three or four customers. 
 
 " I am glad I come," he chortled into his tankard. 
 " Fresh air, exercise, an' good beer. What more 
 can yeh want ? I alv/ays say, give everybody 
 plenty to eat and plenty of good beer to drink,
 
 184 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 and you'll never 'ear the word revolution. You'll 
 never even 'ave discontent. There ain't a revolu- 
 tion what ever 'appened in 'istory but what began 
 in man's stomach. Take away the franchise an' all 
 that political stuff, but, as long as they leave us good 
 food an' drink, we'll be 'appy. . . . Can't somebody 
 sing a song ? " 
 
 " We're not allowed to have any disturbance," 
 said the lady. 
 
 " All right, mum. We'll sing very soft and low. 
 Just 'um, y' know. . . . But ain't it awful that you 
 can't even sing a song but what they calls it creating 
 a disturbance? . . . Can't you 'um a song, sir?" 
 
 The little old man to whom he turned looked up 
 and gave back his twinkle, 
 
 " I useter knaw a soang once." 
 
 "Lessave it then, 'Ow did it go? " 
 
 " I dunnoa. Summin laike tliis," And he pro- 
 duced in a husky quaver : 
 
 or Jawn 'ad an apple tree 'ailthy an' green 
 That bore the best apples that aiver was seen. . , , 
 
 " Noa, that i'n' it. 'Ow'd it go ? I knaw : 
 
 Cold's the wind, and wet's the rain. 
 
 Saint Hugh be our good speed ; 
 Ill's the weather that brings no gain, 
 
 Nor helps good hearts in need. 
 
 Troll the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl, 
 
 And here's, kind mate, to thee ; 
 Let's sing a dirge for Saint Hugh's soul, 
 
 And down it merrily.
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 135 
 
 " Damgood song," said Studdy. " Can't no one 
 else do nothing ? " 
 
 " Here you are," I said, " you can hum this. You 
 hum much better than I can." And I handed him 
 a spent envelope from which he rather more than 
 hummed these lines suggested by the last few miles 
 of our tramp : 
 
 Wood Green's a little woman 
 
 Who leads a woman's life ; 
 A careful, candid mother, 
 
 A busy, cheerful wife. 
 But Palmer's Green's a lady 
 
 Who rises after nine. 
 The Woodgreens have their dinner, 
 
 But the Palmer-Greeners dine. 
 
 Now Southgate's like a young maid 
 
 Who does not know her mind, 
 But harks to every message 
 
 That's borne on every ivind. 
 When Town and Country ivooed her, 
 
 From each she turned her eyes, 
 And now she's settled down in dull 
 
 And horrid compromise. 
 
 Bowes Park has just got married ; 
 
 The orange blossom shoivs 
 Upon her .... 
 
 The sonorous voice, " Now time, gentlemen, 
 please ! " and the general disturbance of the company 
 broke the song into fragments. Studdy gathered 
 up his case of merchandise, and we turned back to 
 Palmer's Green, where we should again pick up 
 Green Lanes. We were now tired, and boarded a
 
 136 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 car which waited by the old thatched and muUioned 
 cottage, dated 1795, now used as a coal order office. 
 Have you, if your wanderings occasion you to long 
 'bus and tram routes, noticed the fine improvement 
 in the conductor's manners, as his car or 'bus gets 
 farther from the bricks ? At these outer districts 
 they become human. They are as they should be ; 
 as Charles Keene and Phil May created them. They 
 are prodigally polite. They make jokes. The fresh 
 breeze inspires them to be mildly flirtatious with 
 young girls and very kindly towards old ladies with 
 baskets. They whistle a stave or so. They keep 
 the car waiting, if signalled from side streets. The 
 car we boarded was empty on top, so, before going 
 up, I handed our fares to the conductor to save 
 him a needless trip. He said : " Thank you very 
 much, sir. Very considerate of you." The same 
 man at Camden Town would have snapped, 
 " Thanks ! " At Tottenham Court Road he would 
 not have done that. 
 
 At Winchmore Hill, Green Lanes breaks from the 
 dusty shackles of town and roams into the open. 
 Here it is bordered by fields of flowers amid which 
 that day stood children breast-high. I thought of 
 Birket Foster's country pictures, and spoke to Studdy 
 of them. (I was then calling him Studdy.) He did 
 not know them ; but he did know Henry Vaughan's — 
 " I walked the other day, to spend my hour, into 
 a field ..." and quoted it. I was glad we were
 
 BOWES PARK TO ENFIELD 137 
 
 alone on the car. Had we been accompanied he 
 would have tried to sell studs, and Henry Vaughan 
 and traffic in studs might have seemed a little incon- 
 gruous to others. We might have attracted remark. 
 
 The forms of worship in the Winchmore Hill 
 district seem to be those of the Corrugated Baptists. 
 At every turn and bend are httle tin temples, each 
 seating with comfort, I reckon, twenty-five grown 
 people. Small and select, I suppose, in worship as 
 in social life. 
 
 And so to Enfield, where Green Lanes loses its 
 identity for ever. It was dusk when we arrived, 
 and I was glad. Pepys came to Enfield at dusk. 
 One should always come to old towns at dusk, and 
 seek with tired legs the lighted inn in the High 
 Street. Rain had fallen before we came, and the 
 sombre line of pavement was interrupted by radiant 
 smears. Against the subdued lights of the principal 
 . inn the old church tower loomed as a pillar of cloud 
 rather than substance. Its gates are separated by 
 some three feet from the door of the inn parlour, 
 towards which Studdy led the way, Enfield is 
 soaked in historic association ; yet this church is 
 most all that survives of its grand days. Oh, there 
 is a butcher's shop kept by one Charles Lamb. 
 Whether this be his true name, I know not ; nor, if 
 it be adopted, whether he took it as a heavy jest 
 upon his profession or in celebration of one already 
 associated with Enfield. The sight of that name
 
 188 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 and that shop, however, recalled to me a passage 
 that I have always carried in a corner of memory : 
 
 " Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield 
 . . . when we had a holiday — hoUdays and all other fun 
 are gone now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in 
 which I used to deposit our day's fare of savoury cold lamb 
 and salad — and how you would pry about at noon-tide for 
 some decent house, where we might go in and produce our 
 store, only paying for the ale that you must call for, and 
 speculate upon the looks of the landlady and whether she 
 was likely to allow us a table-cloth — and wish for such 
 another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many 
 a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea." 
 
 Yes, there is much to be said for Pelmanism if it 
 enables you to call up at the time and the place such 
 passages as that. The doings in Enfield of Elizabeth, 
 James I, and the Gunpowder Plotters lose their 
 savour when served with the sharp sauce of that 
 prose. It came as a pleasant night-cap to our day. 
 I had found the end of Green Lanes. I hurried home 
 to find my battered pocket edition of Elia.
 
 HACKNEY 
 
 " With my wife only to take the ayre, it being very warm 
 and pleasant, to Bowe ; and thence to Hackney. There 
 light and played at shuffle-board, eat cream and good cherries ; 
 and so with good refreshment home." 
 
 THUS Master Samuel Pepys, on June ii, 1663. 
 To-day his cherry gardens are the Metro- 
 poHtan Borough of Hackney, with a popu- 
 lation of a quarter of a million. Yet it does not 
 give itself airs. It carries itself with decent, if 
 somewhat stodgy dignity. When you stand in 
 Mare Street, you know that you are in a borough, 
 but there is nothing of the grandiose about it. 
 Rather, it diffuses an aura of comfort, of the physical 
 well-being attending upon an aldermanic feast. 
 
 It was a June day when I went to Hackney to 
 take the ayre and see the sights, some two hundred 
 and sixty years after Pepys ; but there was no 
 cream to be had, and cherries were two shillings 
 the pound. Nor could I get a game of shuffle-board 
 — probably an early form of shove-ha'p'ny ; though 
 I prefer the term " shuffle-board," as I prefer the term 
 " stool-baU " to " cricket." 
 A young gentleman in leggings, whom I met in a
 
 140 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 house of public entertainment, offered me, in a 
 husky voice, a hundred up ; but I don't play billiards, 
 and I declined. He then suggested that I should 
 tell him in which hand the button was, at a bob a 
 time, " for a bit o' sport, like." I wonder why 
 those who wear spectacles are always taken as soft 
 marks for proposals of this sort ; and I wonder 
 whether Pepys, on his visit to Hackney, was accosted 
 by this young man's great-great-great-great blood 
 relation. 
 
 Nor can I write — " with good refreshment home." 
 Hackney is shy of the visitor. There is no place at 
 the board for him, either above or below the salt. 
 A fly-blown Italian restaurant, with an odour of the 
 week before last, forms its single gesture of welcome 
 to the wayfarer. True, it has many taverns, but 
 none of them makes any attempt to rescue, from 
 the decay into which it is falling, that charming 
 institution — the daily " ordinary." 
 
 In other respects, it is what is known as a progressive 
 suburb. It has an " Empire," and is rich (as my 
 school geography used to sa}^) — rich in picture palaces. 
 It must not be inferred from this that all the people 
 of Hackney are of enfeebled intellects. Oh, no ; it 
 is only a minor section of the inhabitants that finds 
 entertainment in this mechanical, jig-saw, penny-in- 
 the-slottery, cheap-gaff shadow trickery. 
 
 You will infer from this that I dislike the cinema. 
 I loathe the cinema. I loathe it because I loathe
 
 HACKNEY 141 
 
 anything that pretends to be what it is not. Most 
 inventions and enterprises show, in twenty years, a 
 forward movement ; but after twenty years the 
 cinema is still where it was. After twenty years of 
 life the cinema is still in the street of the penny 
 gaff. It is still produced by office boys for office 
 boys. Yet its promoters have the impudence to 
 speak of it as a new art, and of their aiders and 
 abettors as artists. 
 
 One cannot reasonably object to the penny gaff. 
 It is quite right that the office boy, and his grown-up 
 equals, who like their entertainment hot and strong, 
 should be supplied with what they hke. But when 
 the penny gaff claims for itself dignity and con- 
 sideration as a new art-form — just because it can 
 pay its workers enormous salaries — then one is 
 justified in asking it to get off its perch. 
 
 It is time that somebody said what most people 
 are thinking about this shoddy business of cameras 
 and clap-trap, and the ill-informed people who direct 
 it. Consider its " artists." Their " acting " consists 
 of portentous foolery — facial grimaces and club-footed 
 antics. Analyse the work of the world's favourite, 
 Mary Pickford. This lady can simper and smile 
 very charmingly, but her amiable gestures are utterly 
 meaningless. Of the delicate art of pantomime she 
 is entirely ignorant. Her producers and directors 
 have sufficient brains to recognize this ; so between 
 her posturings they insert slabs of letterpress —
 
 142 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 usually hostile to the laws of grammar — to tell you 
 what she is doing. 
 
 There is but one among the whole crowd of " movie 
 stars " who has the slimmest understanding of ges- 
 ture ; and he, unfortunately, who might be doing 
 better things, spends his time capering about in 
 large boots and a misfit bowler hat. One does not 
 need illiterate letterpress to explain what he is 
 doing ; and, if he would throw away his present 
 make-up and come out in " straight " parts, the 
 cinema would possess a pantomimist who would 
 shame all others out of the business. 
 
 When one remembers the Russian Ballet and the 
 exquisite L'Enfant Prodigue, one is appalled at the 
 work of the simpering people who are boosted as 
 artists. If the picture-play were truly a new art, 
 it would achieve its effects solely through its own 
 medium, and not one word would be necessary to 
 explain the grimaces of the artists. But it is not 
 a new art, and never will be. You cannot tell a 
 story through so blunt and unaccommodating a 
 medium as photography. 
 
 Apologists for the cinema have said : " Yes, but 
 it will be better, when serious novelists write stories 
 directly for the screen." I sincerely hope that no 
 serious novelist will do any such thing. The novelist, 
 if he is an artist, achieves his effects by the nice 
 handling of words. The power of words is far greater 
 than the power of pictures, because words say less
 
 HACKNEY 143 
 
 than pictures. Words themselves are nothing : they 
 are hints, murmurings, suggestions. Words have 
 atmosphere, fluency, music, associations which the 
 photograph can never possess. A photograph says 
 everything it has to say, and can suggest nothing 
 more. The most perfect photogi-aph has only the 
 effect on the spectator of a witnessed street accident. 
 The thing is there. You have seen it. Nothing is 
 left to the imagination. 
 
 When an author, in the course of a story, throws 
 in a suggestion that a child is ill-treated by its 
 father, an atmosphere is created, and, if the author 
 has suitably conveyed that atmosphere, the reader's 
 imagination is clothed with it, and he is filled with 
 pity by the half-known thing. But when moving 
 pictures are presented to an audience, showing a 
 brutal father whipping his child with a dog-whip, 
 art is left out, and the audience suffers nothing of 
 that pity — only nausea. The thing seen (as in the 
 cinema) only shocks or fails to interest ; it is the thing 
 suggested and touched by the magic of words (as in 
 literature) that lifts the miserable to the tragic. 
 A headless body on a battlefield is not a tragic 
 sight : it is a revolting sight. But the phrase — 
 " He died in battle for his country " — does carry 
 something of the beauty and tragedy that inspires 
 the hearer. 
 
 But my main objection to the cinema is its effect 
 on the child. It is robbing the child of to-day of
 
 144 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 the exercise of that most precious faculty — imagina- 
 tion. In the cinema the children, who, appropriately, 
 constitute its most numerous patronage, are shown 
 everything as it is. Not for one moment are they 
 allowed to think or to give rein to their fancy. They 
 are shown foreign countries, foreign people going 
 about their daily tasks, foreign religious ceremonies, 
 and so on, in full activity, and their minds are sent 
 empty away. Words awake imagination ; pictures 
 kill it. When I was a child, I could find the map 
 of Asia as enthralling as Andersen's Fairy Tales or 
 Robinson Crusoe. My school geography had furnished 
 me with rough facts about Far Eastern countries, 
 and I could pore over the map, and build its cities 
 for myself. Certainly I built them all wrong ; but 
 how delicious was the process of building, and how 
 valuable was that early training of the imagination ! 
 To-day the child's imagination is stultified at 
 every turn. He is aiown everything in its crude 
 and unsatisfying reality. There is no suggestion 
 round which his mind can play. There is no oppor- 
 tunity for wonder. He is given the bare substance 
 and robbed of the delicious enduring shadow. He 
 can correct my wild surmises of Kurdestan and 
 Baluchestan : he has seen them. Thanks to the 
 cinema, he will never know the joy of creating them. 
 I can recall how, many years ago, for the mass of 
 the people, a halo of mystery encircled that almost 
 legendary figure, Gladstone ; and veneration lapped
 
 HACKNEY 145 
 
 the foot of the throne of that remote lady, Victoria. 
 But the child of to-day has seen all the members 
 of the Cabinet that rules him performing their capers 
 on the screen ; and veneration has fled before it. 
 
 Many who detest as much as I do the rubbish that 
 is shown in the picture-theatres uphold the cinema 
 as a valuable aid in the school-room for purposes 
 of study. Personally, I would rather it continued 
 in its present money-making game of wheedling 
 ninepences from the office boy, and kept well away 
 from the school-room. Otherwise, in twenty years 
 time there will be an end of Imagination and Fancy ; 
 there will be no more Lantern-Bearers. 
 
 Fortunately, it has not yet captured the whole 
 of Hackney. Hackney has still a charming example 
 of Imagination and Fancy in its Parliamentary 
 representative. 
 
 From my brief survey of the natives, and from 
 the fact that it is suppHed with no fewer than twenty- 
 five Council schools, I put the average of Hackney 
 inteUigence at eighty under proof. It is strong on 
 education : it has schools for the deaf, laundry 
 schools, cookery schools, manual training schools, 
 public baths, a disinfecting station, a— in short, 
 everything that is likely to promote material well- 
 being. 
 
 Only the finer inwardness of the mind is ignored. 
 Morals receive excessive attention. The Cult of 
 Interferingness flourishes here. The Salvation Army 
 
 10
 
 146 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 has halls in Havelock Road and Mare Street, and 
 Barracks in Mallard Street ; and the Y.M.C.A. and 
 the Y.W.C.A. busy their bodies, if not their souls, 
 in Mare Street. 
 
 Politics, too, are more in Hackney than a mere 
 gambit for conversation. It supports seven or eight 
 political clubs, and takes the preposterous business 
 seriously. Unlike even the least progressive suburbs, 
 it has not, so far as I could discover, a " Literary 
 and Scientific Society," but as Literature has no 
 economic value, one could hardly expect it to appeal 
 to Hackney. 
 
 As I have said, its outlook is wholly towards the 
 materialistic. It has an ample and comprehensive 
 history for which it does not give a damn. It shares, 
 with the progressive City Corporation, a careful 
 contempt for non-productive survivals of the past, 
 and has successfully rid itself of all out-of-date 
 architecture. 
 
 A few old houses — including Sutton House, where 
 lived old Thomas Sutton, founder of the Charter- 
 house — remain in the Borough; but they stand in 
 Clapton and Homerton, not in Hackney proper. 
 
 Even its open spaces, of which it possesses nine, 
 seem to be designed more for the welfare of the body 
 than for the stinAilation of the mind. The most 
 optimistic of the city fathers could hardly speak of 
 Hackney Downs in connection with calm contem- 
 plation and a mind at «. ase ; and what shall be said
 
 HACKNEY 147 
 
 of thee, thou foul, flat, dank, dour, noisome, mephitic, 
 miserable Hackney Marsh ? Thirty years ago an 
 Earl of Meath described thee as " the most mag- 
 nificent playground in the world ! " If he were not 
 speaking, as chairmen often do speak, through the 
 back of his neck, then I fear he was pulling thy 
 leg. Mr. Frederick Bingham, from whose Guide I 
 have quoted this encomium, admits the utilitarian 
 purpose of these open spaces, but does not apologize. 
 Springfield Park, which really belongs to Clapton, 
 alone makes any pretension to sylvan and pastoral 
 charm. Here is some little repose, some geniality. 
 Springfield Park is quietly dressed and carries itself 
 well, sharply distinct from the " Gorblimey " deport- 
 ment of the Downs and the Marshes. Many years 
 ago, Mr. Gus Elen was telling us, in praise of his 
 London garden, that : 
 
 Wiv a pair of op'ry glasses 
 
 You could see to 'Ackney Marshes, 
 
 If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between. 
 
 Well, he should have been grateful that there were 
 houses in between, to shield him from such an eyesore. 
 Speaking of 'Ackney, what an exercise in aspirates 
 is afforded by the nomenclature of North London. 
 If only its young natives repeated, every morning 
 before breakfast, the place-names from N.E. to 
 N.W., we should hear less of 'Ackney and 'Igit. 
 South of the river one finds very few " h's " ;
 
 148 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 they seem to have settled as a family in the north. 
 Here is a round dozen : Hackney, Homerton, Hagger- 
 ston, Hoxton, Highgate, Hornsey, Hampstead, Har- 
 ringay, Highbury, Holloway, Harlesden and Hendon. 
 South of the river I know of two — Heme Hill and 
 Hatcham. Perhaps some reader can find another ? 
 
 Adjoining Hackney is its obscure, frayed, poor 
 relation, Shacklewell : a queer little district lying 
 lost in a rude triangle formed by Amhurst Road, 
 Dalston Lane and Kingsland High Street. In the 
 sixteenth century Shacklewell was a noble manor, 
 and its Lord married a daughter of Sir Thomas More. 
 To-day it is formless tract of close streets, with 
 houses neither new nor old. Smudgy decency is its 
 note. It is like a family of ancient hneage that 
 has " gone in " for trade, and has lost its own dignity 
 without acquiring the easy vulgarity of its cjm- 
 petitors. It is soaked in self-commiseration ; in- 
 capable of self-help. It is without lustre. It might 
 be that Victorian parlour, where certain people sat, 
 " all silent and all damned." Yet its people are not 
 silent, and they do not take their note from their 
 environment. They are happy, and they must be 
 good ; for only very good people could hold happiness 
 amid the unlovely wastes of Shacklewell. 
 
 In a small, forlorn " place " in Shacklewell I met 
 — I knew he was somewhere about : he always is — 
 I met the old, old man who minded the time (or 
 should one say mound the time ?) when " Shacklewell
 
 HACKNEY 149 
 
 an' 'Ackney were all carn-vealds ; ey, in them day^ 
 there warn't none o' this 'ere.'' And as I turned 
 my back on the dolours of Shacklewell and the 
 clamours of Hackney, and footed it across North 
 London to the pleasaunces of my own Highgate, I 
 did this : 
 
 When Hackney kept its carriages, 
 
 And in Mare Street mares were found, 
 There warn't no blasted kinemas, 
 
 And a pound was worth a pound. 
 The gals was gals in them days, 
 
 And beer were beer, me boy ; 
 And pints was pints, and sometimes quarts, 
 
 And 'earts was full of joy. 
 
 The fellers then was fellers ; 
 
 They didn't try to play 
 At being something lar-di-dar, 
 
 Like fellers do to-day. 
 Then it was — " Wodder y'aving, Jarge ? " 
 
 And — " 'Ave this, Jarge, wi' me ! " 
 But now there ain't no nothing 
 
 Like what it useter be.
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 
 
 ON a bright brusque morning a bespoke 
 tailor and another man went by road 
 from Tottenham to Walthamstow. 
 
 They met in Lordship Lane, the one buying a 
 morning edition of an evening paper, as the other 
 approached with charming address, desiring to 
 know whether Ice Cream Cornet was regarded with 
 favour for the two o'clock. A few perfunctory 
 remarks followed the satisfaction of this desire, 
 and they moved separately in the same direction ; 
 the yards between them dwindling as they reached 
 the High Road. Here a group of sightseers, inspect- 
 ing a loaded furniture van with a wheel off, drew 
 them into intimacy. The bespoke tailor remem- 
 bered a funny story in which a furniture van held 
 a leading part. The other man, stung to compe- 
 tition, remembered one about a green baize apron ; 
 and thereafter they walked about together and 
 agreed in everything. 
 
 It fell out that the other man desired to see 
 Walthamstow, so the bespoke tailor, being his own 
 master, was ready to join him and be a guide. He 
 showed no wonder at the business which occasioned 
 
 ISO
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 151 
 
 the man to Walthamstow. He walked with him 
 and discoursed affably of this and that ; leading 
 the way through the Hale, past the old cattle 
 pound, across the Lea and the Mill-stream, to the 
 Ferry Boat inn, where Ferry Lane begins. He 
 pointed out the Refuse Destructor, of which Totten- 
 ham is so proud that it gives a full-page plate in 
 the local guide, with a page and a half of descriptive 
 letterpress. It is a very fine refuse destructor ; a 
 very stiff, straight, bald destructor ; a Hun of a 
 destructor. 
 
 No tram-car awaited them at Ferry Lane, so 
 a pause at the Ferry Boat inn was suggested. The 
 Ferry Boat inn is in London. With its rustic porch, 
 its pinafore of roses, its cascade of creeper, and the 
 sheets of water that surround it, it entices the villa 
 residents into the depths of Shropshire. From it 
 one may look across that broad expanse of water 
 and marsh that stretches south from Tottenham to 
 Canning Town, and severs a thick slice of the East 
 End from the main body of the town. Lucky folk 
 who live between Tottenham and Walthamstow ! 
 
 When the Chingford car arrived, the bespoke 
 tailor and the other man (who was myself) mounted 
 on top ; and my companion produced his patterns 
 for his new Spring suitings. This was not by way 
 of advertisement, I am sure ; he threw them care- 
 lessly on my knee and asked me to cast my eye 
 over them. I said that they looked very good
 
 152 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 value, and asked if he had been long in the 
 profession. 
 
 " Oh, I bin a cutter for yers. But on'y lately on 
 me own. It's very interesting, y'know, building up 
 a little business. More exciting than backing 'orses, 
 though I 'ave a little on nows and thens, when I 
 'ear anything reliable. Don't know whether I shall 
 make a Do of it. vSometimes I think I shan't, 
 y'know. I like it, though. It's a nice trade — 
 dressing people up — 'specially this time o' year. 
 What I say is : Appearance is everj^thing in the 
 Spring. Ev'body ought to 'ave new suits to go 
 with the Spring sunshine. It makes 'em feel better, 
 and it makes the streets look better and cheers 
 ev'body else up. Dowdy in the winter, if yeh like^ 
 but fer Gorsake come out with a bit o' colour in 
 the Spring. I always urge a bit o' colour on all my 
 young customers, and take a pride in turning 'em 
 out, too. Now my gel, Frances, she goes to the 
 extreme. Too many new frocks, and altogether too 
 much colour, I can cut fer ladies, too, but she 
 won't 'ave my tailor-mades. Will go in fer fal-lals 
 and that sort o' thing. As I says to 'er, it's all 
 right fer Lady Diana. Look at the position the 
 gel's got to keep up. But fer our Frances — no. 
 A thousand times — no. Neatness for 'er, as a tailor's 
 daughter. . . . That's Essex Hall down there, that 
 is — down that road. See the top of it. Very old 
 place. Useter be a school. Old Disraeli went to
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 153 
 
 school there. Wouldn't think it, would yeh, to 
 look at it ? 'E did, though. That's Lloyd Park 
 what we're coming to, on the left. Very nice. 
 Band plays there in the summer. 'Era's 'Oe Street. 
 May's well git orf 'ere." 
 
 We got off. I stood in Forest Road and sniffed 
 the atmosphere. My countenance must have regis- 
 tered perplexity, for a civil-spoken gentleman ap- 
 proached us. " They ain't opening to-day," he 
 said oracularly, with a backward jerk of the head. 
 " Come down in the car ? Ah. I can tell y'of a 
 place what will open. Course, I don't tell ev'body. 
 But if any genterman asks me, I'm always wilHng 
 to give him the information." 
 
 His hand moved before him, opening and closing. 
 We thanked him for his kind offer, but Walthamstow 
 was waiting to uncover her charms to us, and we 
 strolled down Hoe Street. Walthamstow — • You 
 probably think of it with a tolerant smile ; and 
 you repeat its syllables — Walth^imstow — with an 
 accent of scorn on the first. But as we moved 
 about its streets, touched here and there with tressed 
 trees of laburnum, chestnut, and Hlac, I was glad 
 to know Walthamstow. 
 
 Walthamstow, I learn from the local guide, has 
 a population of about 150,000, and five railway 
 stations. I had known before that it was the largest 
 of all London's " dormitories," since it was able to 
 demand and obtain an all-night service to and from
 
 154 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Liverpool Street. But I did not know that its 
 municipal reports carried what Defoe has called 
 " such a rumbling sound of great numbers." I did 
 not know about the five railway stations. I did 
 not know a lot of things I learnt in five minutes in 
 the Public Library. Our approach to the place 
 had given me an impression that it had connection 
 with the past ; but I had not known that it was 
 so rich in story, or that it was so rich in people. 
 Nowhere else have I seen streets and houses crowd 
 so closely one upon the other. Wave after wave 
 of villas rolls eastward to break upon the green of 
 Ilssex. Never are its highways at peace ; always 
 there is a stir of men returning to rest or rising 
 to labour. 
 
 It is well placed. It is airy and open, as a dor- 
 mitory should be. It has the Lea on its west, the 
 Forest on its east, Chingford on its north, and Leyton 
 on its south. Not content with the Lea, it has pro- 
 duced two minor streams — the Ching and Dagenham 
 Brook. It has a good dozen of Tudor and Georgian 
 mansions and half a dozen High Schools ; and signi- 
 ficantly substantial Town Hall, Library, and Swim- 
 ming Bath, 'ihese facts I have taken from the 
 Guide to Walthamstow. It is the only guide I 
 know that berates its own subject. Of the Parish 
 Church it says : 
 
 " The church is devoid of any architectural or antiquarian 
 pretensions. . . . The interior is not beautiful ; the pro-
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 155 
 
 portions are not good ; and the fittings and furniture are of 
 little interest." 
 
 Surely that is unique in guide-book literature. 
 
 Of more interest than the church are the houses. 
 In that which is now the lodge of Lloyd Park lived 
 William Morris, and in the moat that surrounds it 
 he swam and boated in his youth. Other great 
 names hang about Walthamstow — Martineau, Car- 
 dinal Wiseman, Granville Sharp, Milner Gibson, 
 Morell Mackenzie and Samuel Pepys. Pepys paid 
 many a visit hither ; once to a christening at a Mrs. 
 Browne's, and on the other occasion to the house 
 (now demohshed) of Sir WilHam Batten, who kept 
 a vineyard. " He did give the company that were 
 there a bottle or two of his own last year's wine, 
 growing at Walthamstow, than which the whole 
 company said they never drank better foreign wines 
 in their lives." The Monoux Almshouses, of the 
 sixteenth centurv, are a charm and satisfaction to 
 the eye ; as suave and harmonious as " Cook's 
 Folly " is preposterous. 
 
 But what I found most " taking " about Walt- 
 hamstow were these things : The languid curvature 
 of Hoe Street ; the short, snappy High Street ; the 
 happy architectural mixture of ancient and modern, 
 of proud and paltry ; the American Candy Saloon 
 and Cream-Soda Bar ; and the view from Highams 
 across the vast plain of homes. 
 
 About Forest Road there is an unseemly decency ;
 
 156 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 a down-at-heel-ness of one who has lost both means 
 and capacity for joy ; crazy shops, untenanted 
 shops, and late Victorian workmen's cottages. But 
 Hoe Street takes an interest in itself. Its upper 
 end holds a number of old private houses turned 
 into shops, such as you see in expanding country 
 villages. They have stood the change very well. 
 Instead of bewailing their loss of gentility, they 
 seem to enter cheerily into the new estate. In the 
 dining-room window are displayed the goods, and 
 you mount steps to an august front door which 
 admits to the counter. Pinched and penurious the 
 shops and houses are, but by no means dowdy. 
 They make the best of things. The street is fragrant 
 of the beauty and simphcity of common people. 
 Like the unheeded flowers that beautify the waste 
 places about the town, they are strong, but neither 
 use nor display their strength ; they are oft trodden 
 upon, but are seldom crushed and never murmur. 
 These of Walthamstow know how to enjoy. They 
 support a dozen picture-palaces. They have half 
 a dozen recreation grounds. They have, in Hoe 
 Street, the Victoria Theatre, where good resounding 
 melodrama shows them the sweetness and light of 
 their own humble lives and the bitter darkness 
 that cloaks the heart of Society. They have, in 
 the High Street, a GulHver music-hall and an Ameri- 
 can Ice-Cream Bar. The men are sporty fellows, 
 for Walthamstow is on the road to Newmarket,
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 157 
 
 and the breeze from the Heath carries news to 
 Walthamstow. " Information " trips down the road 
 from the stables, and is tripped up and pinioned 
 at Walthamstow, and held to the ransom of those 
 who seek Good Tilings. 
 
 Very ductile the week's wages must become under 
 the hands of the wives of Walthamstow, for they 
 make both ends meet in a wide circle. Their motto 
 seems to be: "We haven't got much money, but 
 we do see life." Certainly they do. They walk 
 jauntily. There is no apathetic bargaining, as in 
 some suburbs, at the butcher's and the fishmonger's. 
 It is bargaining hale and hearty. The parties strip 
 to it and enter in fine tune. 
 
 At its southern end Hoe Street improves its 
 exterior. It is preened and polished. The shops 
 are larger and extravagant with plate glass. Here 
 are groups of early Georgian houses, well-preserved 
 and of courtly mien. But the shops are undismayed 
 by their august company ; and between two of the 
 groups a green and white and gold picture-palace 
 has squatted. That is a gesture wholly superb ; 
 the challenge of youth to age ; the irreverent defiance 
 of the immutable. It jostles these stagnant elders, 
 to say : " Pass along, there, now. Pass along, old 
 man. You've made your history. Pass along, and 
 give other people a chance to make theirs." 
 
 At the American Ice Cream Bar the bespoke 
 tailor and I paused and admired its aluminium
 
 158 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 fittings, its bottles of coloured fruit juices, its tinkle 
 of ice and its noise of effervescence. The day was 
 warm. We entered and rested, and ordered a 
 " banana squash " (I think the dish was thus named). 
 It was a tumbler of flavoured soda-water, in which 
 floated ice-cream and a sliced banana. Following 
 the table manners of Mr. Salteena in The Young 
 Visiters, we lapped it up thankfully. 
 
 " Ha ! " said the tailor, as he set down his glass, 
 " in the words of the poet Champion, ' that was 
 a milky one.' " 
 
 " Like it ? " The question came in adenoidal 
 accents from a young Jewess at the next table. 
 She was sucking a long drink through a straw. Her 
 bearing invited talk. 
 
 " It was as good as the drink that old Pepys had 
 when he came to Walthamstow." 
 
 " Reely ? I like these American drinks. This 
 your dinner hour ? " 
 
 " No. We're just having a look round." 
 
 " I see. Strangers here. Got a day off from the 
 office, like, and come for a ride on the 'bus, I s'pose ? 
 Bit dull here, ain't it ? I work round here. You 
 know — no Life. I like a bit of life, I do. Wish I 
 could get a job in the City or up West, somewhere. 
 . . . Hullo, Rube." 
 
 A staggering suit of clothes entered the bar and 
 sat down at her table. Breathless conversation 
 followed.
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 159 
 
 The bespoke tailor turned to me. " Artist by 
 any chance ? " 
 
 " No," I repUed. 
 
 " Ha. Thought p'raps you might be, as you 
 seem to got your time to yourself. And yet you 
 ain't as shabby as most artists. I knew a artist 
 once. But so shabby. So dowdy. Bought 'is 
 clothes anywhere — readies — wherever 'e 'appened 
 to be. Come out in all sorts of slops. Reely, I 
 was ashamed to be seen about with 'im sometimes. 
 Me being a tailor, j^'know, it looked so bad. . . . 
 Would it be rude of me to enquire what you 
 do? " 
 
 " Oh— I write." 
 
 " What — stories and things ? Reely ? Fancy 
 that, now. . . . 'Ere, just look at that chap going 
 out — what's been talking to the gel. Now there's 
 a wicked waste for yeh. Them clothes of 'is must 
 'a cost 'im a pritty penny. I can tell that by the 
 stuff. But look at the cut. Look at the building. 
 Kind o' thing that makes me angry. I'd chuck up 
 business 'fore I'd turn a lad out Hke that — or let 
 'im turn 'isself out hke it. Wicked. I call it. But 
 there's 'caps o' tailors like that — take no interest in 
 their job." 
 
 " Ssss ! " The sibilants came from the lady behind 
 us. We turned. 
 
 " My brother just gone out." 
 
 " Oh ? "
 
 160 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 " 'M. He's a awful good boy to me. Awful fond 
 of me." 
 
 " Is he ? " 
 
 " 'M. Always giving me presents. Look what 
 he's just give mc. Blouse-pin. Ain't it lovely ? 
 Have a look at it." She passed it to us. It was 
 not from the local emporium. It was the genuine 
 article, though a little flashy. " Always doing that, 
 he is. Other Sunday he come home with a lovely 
 box of scented soap for me. One-and-ten he give 
 for it. Got it trade price from a friend who's in 
 that line. On'y I wasn't there. I'd gone out to 
 my Aunt Rachel's. So he sold it to my young sister 
 for one-and-two. He wouldn't a' sold it to me, 
 though. He'd 'a give it to me." 
 
 The tailor nudged me. " There's a story for 
 yeh," he whispered, with other nudges. " A chap 
 who can write could make a 'ole story out o' 
 that, eh ? " 
 
 I nodded. I was making a few notes on Wal- 
 thamstow, 
 
 " Ssss. What's he writing there ? " 
 
 " Making notes," rephed my friend. " 'E's an 
 author." 
 
 " 00. Are you ? Reely ? What you writing 
 
 about ? " 
 
 " I'm writing about Walthamstow now." 
 
 " Oo. About us ? What'll you say about us ? " 
 
 "Oh, I shall say nice things about Lloyd Park
 
 WALTHAMSTOW 161 
 
 and about Hoe Street, and Essex Hall; and Highams, 
 and the Almshouses and " 
 
 " Oh, yes, they're old. They always write about 
 old places in books, don't they ? Ain't you saying 
 anything about why we can't have dancing on 
 Sundays ? " 
 
 " I didn't know you couldn't have dancing on 
 Sundays." 
 
 " Well, we can't. And lots of us want it. You 
 say something about that in your book, and people'U 
 buy it. You see." 
 
 The tailor ordered three more " milky ones," one 
 each for us and one for the lady, who told us that 
 she had to get back to the shop. We finished ours 
 leisurely and strolled out, just as the two o'clock 
 result was put out on the streets. It was an unfor- 
 tunate result for my companion. It seemed to 
 cloud the day for him ; and soon he excused himself 
 and said that he, too, would get back to the shop. 
 
 IX
 
 ILFORD 
 
 STRANDED, without company, in Waltham- 
 stow, I sought a way out, and took a ticket 
 on that morbid and introspective railway 
 that passes through Walthamstow. 
 
 Do you know this secret railway ? Very few 
 people outside those who use it daily know it. Its 
 termini are St. Pancras and East Ham. Its course 
 describes a wiggly semi-oval, and its intermediate 
 stations are Camden Road, Kentish Town, Highgate 
 Road, Junction Road, Upper HoUoway, Hornsey, 
 Crouch Hill, Harringay Park, St. Ann's Road, South 
 Tottenham, Black Horse Road, Walthamstow, Ley- 
 ton, Leytonstone, Wanstead Park, and Woodgrange 
 Park. Its scenery is varied from the sleek and 
 respectable to the tousled, the forlorn, and the 
 industrial. I have a terrible fancy that the people 
 who travel along this Hne have never travelled 
 any other line ; that they spend their lives crawling 
 along the northern and north-eastern edge of London. 
 The trains are often packed ; but whence the people 
 come or whither they go, I know not. At some of 
 the stations there is no sign of habitation or human 
 life. Yet travellers alight at these places. Perhaps 
 
 162
 
 ILFORD 168 
 
 they rest awhile in the vasty waiting-room, or 
 stretch their legs along the unwieldy platform, till 
 the next train comes to retrieve them. They are 
 not as other Londoners. They have an alien, lost 
 air about them. One is surprised, when they speak 
 in the Cockney tongue ; so exiled do they seem from 
 normal circumstances. They appear in the strange 
 habihments of strange trades. One told me once 
 that he was a " holder-up " ; another told me he 
 was a " cHcker." Exposed laundry is one of the 
 principal features of the landscape. It is always 
 washing-day in the hamlets about this line. 
 Choose your time for the journey as you may, 
 the train will pull you through ten miles of 
 washing-day, 
 
 I left the train at Woodgrange Park, and walked 
 the gaunt length of Romford Road to Ilford. Rom- 
 ford Road is very long and very lackadaisical. It 
 seems not to want to go to Romford. I impute no 
 fault to it on this count ; I have been to Romford. 
 Somebody has crowned Ilford " the Eastern Queen." 
 The passion for sobriquets is often ineptly indulged. 
 The local guide-book says of Ilford that its popu- 
 lation " is largely composed of City men and their 
 families, the husbands finding it to be a dehghtful 
 place after the rush and turmoil of the day." Per- 
 haps; But to my mind the avenues about Lombard 
 Street hold peace and contemplation against the 
 assaulting and undehghtful noise of Ilford Broadway.
 
 164 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Ilford offers little to the sojourner. It even taunts 
 the eager appetite that he brings. 1± lacks meat ; 
 it has nothing for the voracious traveller to bite 
 upon. Its tones are flat and wan. 
 
 After Walthamstow it comes as tepid soda-water 
 upon an August noon. Its sorrows and its joys 
 alike seem attenuated. It has not yet found itself. 
 It is uncouth, leggy ; plagued with the humours 
 of the gawk. It falls between the shirt-sleevedom 
 of Peckham and the gigmanity of Eltham ; it has 
 neither the brisk self-respect of Brixton nor the 
 go-as-you-pleasery of Upton Park. Being so near 
 the East End, yet of seemly aspect, it gives itself 
 faint airs. (This magnificent mixture of metaphors 
 pleases me.) It would like to date its correspondence 
 from Ilford, Essex, instead of Ilford, E. Against 
 its unpolished neighbours of the E. district — Aldgate, 
 Barking, Stepney, Poplar, Canning Town — it is 
 genteel. Against the wide estates of Essex it is 
 ignoble. It is at once the patrician of the East 
 End and the blunt democrat of Essex. It tries to 
 look, especially at Cranbrook Park, as though it 
 had been ravaged and brought within the borders 
 of the East End under duress ; and it does not 
 succeed. Walthamstow is content with its lot ; 
 Ilford wears an expression of unfulfilled desire. It 
 hungers for colour. Even the " rush and turmoil " 
 about the Broadway have a frigid tone. 
 
 As for its neighbour, Seven Kings — well, the
 
 ILFORD 165 
 
 guide-book tells me that Seven Kings "is an integral 
 part of Ilford." I can well believe it. 
 
 While approaching Ilford along Romford Road — 
 the only road in London, I believe, whose house 
 and shop numbers go beyond i,ooo — I had a feeling 
 that I would not Hke Ilford. My instinct was right. 
 I do not like Ilford. I have worked Ilford pretty 
 thoroughly. I have " combed it out " and found 
 nothing. Even its twelfth-century hospital chapel 
 does not save it. This is its only architectural 
 beauty ; and one feels that Ilford does not deserve 
 it. More apt, more considered, is the venerable 
 Clock Tower in the Broadway, dating back to 1881. 
 It is imposingly placed, and one feels that it belongs 
 to Ilford, and that Ilford is pleased with it. Two 
 picture-palaces, in the best White City style, which 
 first faced the " rush and turmoil " of the town 
 ten long years ago, also belong to the family. But 
 the twelfth-century hospital chapel seems to be a 
 changeling. 
 
 Yet here, as at Walthamstow, the lilac was in 
 bloom. Here were people buying beef and linen 
 and bread. Here were trams and 'buses and Fourth 
 "Stars"; all the external appointments that had 
 rejoiced me in other places. What, then, was lack- 
 ing that Ilford should miss the quality of its sister 
 suburbs ? I cannot tell. I am not good at subtle- 
 ties. Make the journey, and assure yourselves. I 
 never saw people so half-happy. The shoppers
 
 166 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 walked with pre-occupied air. Ripe appreciation of 
 the bargain was wanting. I suppose Ilford, though 
 forced, by economic stress, to bargaining, regards the 
 business as a descent from its hardly-held dignity, 
 and, like so many people, is shamefaced at doing 
 the necessary thing, where your true aristocrat 
 brings his native dignity to the most ignoble office. 
 Even on Saturday nights, as I noted on later visits, 
 the tide of human joy is at no more than half-flood. 
 Malcontent I found on all sides ; it enveloped me. 
 So shorn of comfort did I feel that I had to troll 
 a stave on the spot, and could only express myself 
 in a form as comfortless as my then state : the 
 new vers libre which was invented by the Chinese 
 some thousands of years ago : 
 
 At Ilford, in the early afternoon, 
 
 You see very few men in the street ; 
 
 But numbers of sour-faced ladies with baskets, 
 
 Who exchange lugubrious gossip. 
 
 And stare at the stranger with the utmost hostility; 
 
 As who should say: Where's that ' alf -brick ? 
 
 Still, I will give it The Valentines, the most 
 beautiful of London's natural parks. From a grape- 
 vine at The Valentines was taken the shoot that 
 has since grown into the Great Vine at Hampton 
 Court. The Valentines has, too, the most noble 
 Cedar of Lebanon in London, a Tudor Lake, a 
 Bishop's Walk, and, in the pool by its Jacob's 
 Well, many rare water-fowl. The place itself hear-
 
 ILFORD 167 
 
 tened me ; my warmth was increased when I dis- 
 covered that there were some young people in Ilford 
 and that they appreciated its tranquihties. That 
 day they were there in groups and couples, bringing 
 to the bowered walks the light noise of their custom. 
 Whether Ilford's sweet youngUngs are imprisoned 
 during the day — only the plain ones being made 
 free of the streets — or whether the Valentines blesses 
 them all with its own beauty, I know not ; but here, 
 in loveliness of curl and limb and countenance, they 
 frolic. The boys are brave ; the girls are urgent 
 and bright. Ilford, though, has put its mark upon 
 them. Like Ilford, they are ambitious. They have 
 not the rough gestures of other youth. They are 
 grown beyond their age ; and instead of playing 
 vociferous games, girl looks to boy and leads him 
 captive. In the shy retreats they play at love ; 
 and when the bell is heard, warning of the closing 
 of the gates, you may see them coming from the 
 woodland, hand in hand, reluctant of the unkind 
 wastes of Ilford streets. 
 
 So is Ilford saved from my complete reproach. 
 For the sake of the children in The Valentines, one 
 can forgive it its Clock Tower, its corpulent muni- 
 cipal buildings, its bleak byways, and its hang-dog 
 shoppers. And that's Ilford. Having seen it, I can 
 better understand the case of the Silent Wife. 
 Twelve months in Ilford would be enough to render 
 the most loquacious chatterer speechless. But the
 
 168 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Ilford I show you here is only the Ilford that I saw. 
 I do not forget that there must be men in distant 
 lost places, to whom Ilford is the one corner of the 
 earth to which at last they would come. 
 
 But its vexed laughter was too much for me. I 
 heard the glad guffaws of other places calling, and 
 sought my way out. Here I suffered the last dismay. 
 Not only does Ilford distress the stranger ; having 
 caught him, it does its best to hold him in its chill 
 confines. To go to Ilford is a fool's act ; to get 
 away from it is a knightly achievement. It is on 
 the edge of nothing, with a dilatory and dilapidated 
 service to transport you to anything. There are 
 the foul and insanitary Great Eastern trains, which 
 will drag you, in an hour or so, to Liverpool Street 
 — whither nobody in his senses would want to go ; 
 there are half-hearted tram-cars, which will carry 
 you to Barkingside and Hainhault Forest ; there is 
 a bald road leading to the flats of Essex ; and an 
 unfriendly road which leads to Stratford Broadway. 
 Choosing the least of many pains I took the road 
 to Stratford. 
 
 Once out of Ilford, my interest revived. A coffee- 
 shop called " The Mitre " attracted me. Beneath 
 the sign was a home-made notice, the motto, per- 
 haps, of the owner of "The Mitre," reading: 
 
 Tea Coffee Cocoa 
 Promptness and Sivility
 
 ILFORD 169 
 
 I entered and called for tea, and, waiting for it, 
 caught, from an unseen in the next pew, a human 
 note that tickled my heart. 
 
 " Spunse cake. Last words she said to me, as 
 I come out — don' you go'n fergit baby's spunse 
 cake, she says. Every day she says that, though 
 I never 'ave fergot it. No matter what state I git 
 'ome, I always got that spunse cake somewhere in 
 
 me pocket. I wouldn't let the little go wivout 
 
 'is spunse cake not fer a thousand million pounds, 
 I wouldn't." 
 
 The tea arrived, a viscid, leathery fluid of Pussy- 
 foot vintage, and I sipped it timorously and turned 
 my mind from it to an Illustrated London News of 
 the year before last. Then came the sensation of 
 the day. As I gloomed over the nut-brown, through 
 the heat and grease of the coffee-shop trickled the 
 cool tones of a piano. This was not of itself sen- 
 sational. What was sensational was that, somewhere 
 in the upper rooms, unfeatly fingers were stumbling 
 through the work of a modern Englishman : Joseph 
 Holbrooke's " Ulalume." So unexpected, so incon- 
 gruous was this interlude that, without intent, I 
 ordered another cup, A Chopin nocturne in the 
 suburbs would not have surprised me ; a Debussy 
 fragment would not have shocked ; Chaniinade, the 
 Charles Garvice of music, one might have expected ; 
 but to listen to an interpretation of an abstruse 
 work by a British composer in Romford Road . . ,
 
 170 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 To that unknown musician above the coffee-shop 
 I make this greeting. That moment was worth 
 my travail with the dolours of Ilford. I felt as a 
 benighted foot traveller, who amid the wet winds is 
 suddenly warmed by the promising Hghts of the 
 hospitable inn. Kind hands, that brought such 
 unction to an Ilford-stricken traveller, my greeting ! 
 
 I waited till they had rested from the keys ; then, 
 leaving the second cup, I paid the reckoning and 
 went. I feared that the beatitude of the moment 
 might be broken by some drawing-room banaUty. 
 I wanted Holbrooke in Romford Road as the day's 
 nosegay. 
 
 }
 
 CROUCH END 
 
 THERE is something prim and ladylike about 
 Crouch End, that reminds one of a Mendels- 
 sohn melody. In the early coaching days, 
 before the road to Highgate was made, it stood on 
 the main north road, and was then a hamlet of a 
 few poor cottages, enclosed by the country seats 
 of the nobility and gentry. When the new road 
 was built, it left Crouch End in seclusion ; and 
 Crouch End has grown up in tranquility, beyond 
 contact with the gross and noisy world of traffic. 
 
 To-day, the Broadway, where six roads meet in 
 flamboyant curves, gives an impression of busy calm. 
 In appearance it is clean-cut and solid, and its Clock 
 Tower does not (intentionally) offend the aesthetic 
 sense. 
 
 " Good people " still live around Crouch End : 
 perhaps fallen buds of the nobility and gentry of 
 other days ; and the shops play up to them, and 
 quiet prosperity attends their endeavours. Here are 
 shops for every shopping purpose. Their windows 
 are opulent with the newest and the freshest ; no 
 week-before-lastism here. The assistants are alert, 
 
 171
 
 172 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 yet never slapdash, and the shoppers have an air 
 of " no complaints." 
 
 In one respect it sets a noble example to other 
 suburbs : I mean in its consideration of the way- 
 farer. It possesses no fewer than four restaurants, 
 where lunch is served daily. Further, there is a 
 baker's shop, with a full licence. Thither, at twelve 
 o'clock, come old ladies, placid as pugs, yet with 
 enough of vitality in them to appreciate God's gift 
 of the grape. There they sit at little tables, with 
 their melange of packages, and sip glasses of port 
 or sherry, and mumble a biscuit or so. 
 
 Through the Broadway, where once stood the 
 turnpike gate over which Ainsworth, using showman's 
 licence, sent Dick Turpin on Black Bess, run quaint 
 single-deck 'buses to Tottenham, Finsbury Park and 
 Muswell Hill. So steep are the ascents, in this 
 section of the Northern Heights, that double-deckers 
 cannot be used. Among its other features must be 
 mentioned the Welcome Club, conducted by the 
 energetic Mr, Samuel Christy (not of the minstrel 
 family) ; a pleasant road consecrated to Coleridge 
 (Highgate, where he lived, does not even remember 
 him) ; and the best book-shop I have ever found in 
 a suburb. It once had a theatre called the Crouch 
 End Opera House, but this is now a bedizened picture 
 palace, called the Crouch End Hippodrome. 
 
 Most suburban second-hand book-shops are kept 
 by old men with beards, and their stock is as dusty
 
 CROUCH END X73 
 
 and bearded as themselves. But Crouch End's 
 second-hand book-shop is a model of what such a 
 shop should be. It is the property of a young man, 
 and his stock is as spruce and youthful as himself. 
 
 You may examine his shelves for half an hour, 
 and still have clean hands. All his volumes are 
 what are called in the trade " bright " copies, as 
 new. There is not one grubby item in his shop ; 
 and his window is a delight to the eye and the mind. 
 It makes a spot of colour in a dull road, with its 
 gay mottoes, its mezzotints, Chinese prints and 
 editions de luxe. Mr. Victor Whitehead is an 
 enthusiast for the modern poets and the " younger " 
 intellectuals, and I hope Crouch End appreciates him. 
 
 I wonder, though. For Crouch End has many 
 tennis clubs, and when you know that a suburb 
 supports tennis clubs, you know pretty closely its 
 social and intellectual status. You don't find tennis 
 clubs in Bermondsey or Hoxton, or Canning Town, 
 or Barnsbury. 
 
 There is something about tennis that belongs to 
 leisure and affluence. Bermondsey and Hoxton have 
 their cricket and football clubs, for these are demo- 
 cratic games. But tennis is still in the swaggering 
 stage. It is still suggestive of the pert daughter of 
 the City man and the handsome young curate. It 
 is still very Crouch End-y. 
 
 At Crouch End the young and the old go in for 
 tennis. There is a nice touch of character in this.
 
 174 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 There are people who " play " tennis and people who 
 "go in for" tennis. The "players" of tennis are 
 bearable ; it is the others that cause the heathen 
 to imagine a vain thing. 
 
 As in the days of the nobihty and gentry there 
 were humble cottages to set off the opulence of the 
 dwellers on the hillside, so to-day there is a poorer 
 quarter of Crouch End which the big Broadway 
 has elbowed well out of sight. It hides itself 
 modestly in Park Road, where stands the Council 
 School ; and in Park Road one finds deliberate joy 
 in place of the kid-gloved prune-and-prism deport- 
 ment of Crouch End proper. 
 
 At twelve o'clock, when school is " out," it flashes 
 with the bright frocks and bare arms and legs of 
 the little girls, and bubbles with the yells and war- 
 fare of the boys. At twelve o'clock, too, the " May- 
 nard Arms " throws open its doors, and invites the 
 traveller into its bright saloon, filled with flowers 
 and ferns and the jovial soul of its landlord. It is 
 a good house, with an atmosphere of quiet well- 
 being, its walls decorated with those American 
 " uphft " mottoes : " Work like Helen B. Merry," 
 and S0 on. 
 
 Adjoining the Council School is a building that 
 leads a double life. In the evenings it is a Gospel 
 Hall. By day it is a restaurant, where good and 
 cheap dinners and teas are served. It is a worthy 
 practice, this revival of the monastic custom, and
 
 CROUCH END 175 
 
 I would like to see it adopted by all religious estab- 
 lishments. 
 
 It was holiday time when I was at Crouch End, 
 and children were everywhere. In the Broadway 
 were only the ladylike children ; but in Park Road 
 the real children gathered to celebrate that delightful 
 July festival — the Grotto. 
 
 Year after year this festival is kept up, with its 
 monotonous chant of " Please remember the Grotter ! " 
 yet not one child in a hundred knows its origin, or 
 why it is kept in July. They have not heard of the 
 marvellous Grotto in Spain, the resting-place of 
 James the Less ; and how money was collected 
 from pious pilgrims who visited it on that saint's 
 day, each July, to keep it perpetually lighted by 
 candles. To the children it is simply a pleasant 
 means of making a few pence. There are many 
 worse means. 
 
 Vulgar things like grottoes could not, of course, 
 be allowed in the Broadway, which is so very grown- 
 up ; but at other corners I found one-man grottoes, 
 partnership grottoes, and syndicate grottoes. I 
 noted one point in the management of a syndicate 
 grotto, which showed that the ways of the City are 
 well known to the children. The directive, business 
 side of the concern kept well in the background, and 
 employed a pigeon — the best-looking, best-spoken 
 boy, with pathetic eyes — to collect the money. 
 I wonder, by the way, when somebody will
 
 176 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 write a book about real children ; children as 
 they are. 
 
 When you count the number of attempts that 
 have been made to interpret the child through the 
 medium of literature, you may say that you count 
 the number of failures. Never yet has the essential 
 child been ensnared between the covers of a book ; 
 for how shall one seek to fasten to the printed page 
 an eternal, elusive miracle ? Colour or line may 
 achieve it, but words — words may come, but they 
 are only words, bleak and stark and brittle. One 
 needs rather symbols, butterflies. It is this mystery, 
 this intangible something for which we have no 
 name, that has proved the pitfall of almost every 
 writer who has attempted to interpret it ; for, take 
 up 999 books out of i,ooo in which the child appears, 
 and you will find that each writer subscribes to 
 the old nonsense that he is romantic and poetic. 
 He isn't. He's the most sanely materialist of all 
 creatures of this world. He is the apotheosis of 
 Common Sense, which is Genius. He doesn't believe 
 in fairies ; he doesn't believe in anything that makes 
 no response to the senses ; he goes one better ; he 
 makes you believe in them. And while he builds 
 his dreams upon rattles, feeding-bottles, soldiers and 
 railway-trains — the things that men work with, and 
 play with, and fight with — we elders build ours upon 
 the transient glory with which he surrounds himself. 
 Try how you may, you shall never catch this glory.
 
 CROUCH END 177 
 
 In manhood and womanhood we have qualities 
 very sharp and definite, easily distinguished, easily 
 set down ; but to ensnare the will-o'-the-wisperie 
 of a little girl's heart is a labour of love and tears. 
 On canvas, of course, the thing has been done, for 
 there is the medium through which we may approach 
 her — colour ; and there you have her in the pictures 
 of Murillo, Reynolds, Chabas, Ralph Peacock, and 
 others. 
 
 Among the chief mistakes of the would-be inter- 
 preter of childhood is that of regarding the youngsters 
 as immature men and women, which they are not. 
 They are children — mature or immature on that 
 plane. Manhood is a separate state of being, and 
 has no connection with childhood, marks no stage 
 of progression, except in so far as a piece of coal 
 marks a progression from a bundle of leaves. I 
 have never yet found a parent who did not regard 
 children with a tender contempt, instead of that 
 level, undemonstrative companionship which they 
 all yearn for ; yet I have known Httle girls of twelve 
 and thirteen who, as human creatures, were much 
 more complete than many folk of forty. In the 
 opposite direction, the unfortunate child is regarded 
 as a concoction of sugar and spice. This is the safe 
 way ; this is the way to big sales ; for nine-tenths 
 of the public share this view — look at the success 
 of Sir James Barrie. One can only assume that 
 memories are very short, and that we are all incUned 
 
 12
 
 178 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 to look back, through a distorting glass, at those 
 husthng, strenuous years of our childhood. How 
 else to account for the acceptance of all the spurious 
 stuff that is produced each year — the " Little 
 White Birds" and the " Blue Nightingales " and the 
 "Pink Rabbits"? There are thousands of people 
 who, after reading such books or witnessing such 
 plays, come away in a genuine belief that they 
 have touched fingertips with the remote spirit of 
 Childhood. I envy them their simple faith ; and 
 as a counter-blast to such rubbish, I should like to 
 place in their hands a copy of Frank Wedekind's 
 Friihlings Erwachen. 
 
 The lamblike love of Convention on the part of 
 the public is proved by the fact that the three or 
 four books which get nearest to the real child have 
 been complete failures. The few " live " children 
 of fiction can be numbered on the fingers of one 
 hand. When the Ubrary reader thinks of childhood 
 in fiction, he thinks of those detestable caricatures 
 by Dickens — Little Nell, Tiny Tim, Paul Dombey, 
 and the Fat Boy — and of the wistful unreality of 
 Lord Fauntleroy or Peter and Wendy, and other 
 creations — which too often are " made out of 
 their own heads " — by various confectioners. Who 
 reads Bret Harte's Mliss these days ? Yet in Clytie 
 and Mliss you have two human little girls, in all 
 their unashamed naturalness, as real as any living 
 thing. And are not Stephen Crane's Whilomville
 
 CROUCH END 179 
 
 boys the livest things in knickerbockers ? Yet, who 
 turns to them while he may suck the syrup of Peter 
 Pan and Wendy and Tommy and Grizel ? 
 
 And who that would not rather read Alice than 
 Les Curiositds de Lily, by Antonin Reschal ? Yet 
 here is a man who has got nearer to the soul of the 
 thing than any other writer, and who, touching a 
 phase of child life that is for some reason entirely 
 glossed over by our own writers — though it is far 
 and away the most important phase — has pene- 
 trated cleanly and swiftly, as only the Latin mind 
 can, to the heart of the girl-child. This is a book 
 that should have been written many decades ago ; 
 a book certainly that every school teacher would 
 do well to consider as a pendant to Frank Wede- 
 kind's terrible play mentioned above. Whoever 
 translates the Wedekind play into EngUsh will 
 almost certainly find himself in prison ; yet it is 
 a book that should be known to all who have charge 
 of children ; it is a gospel of childhood ; it is at 
 once an indictment and a cry for mercy. Wedekind 
 and Reschal together have presented children to us 
 as all intelligent people know them to be. They say, 
 boldly and without any licentious reticence, things 
 that are universally known to all who have the care 
 of children ; and things that are universally known 
 are invariably ignored until someone comes along 
 and puts them into words. 
 
 One other book I know which makes a happy
 
 180 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 attempt at presenting the common boy : Nash and 
 Some Others, by C. S. Evans, who was, for some 
 years, a Board School teacher. In this book he 
 has given us, for the first time, the London school- 
 boy as he is. One of the solemn laws of child 
 literature is that you may only write about " nice " 
 children. Stories about boys — even in the crude 
 publications of Fleetway House — must be about 
 public-school boys ; and must have for their settings 
 disguised Etons, Harrows, and Westminsters. Little 
 girls, in fiction, must have nurseries. On no account 
 may you write about other kinds of children. Frankly, 
 this seems rather rough on the twenty million other 
 children who live in the kitchen, and learn to make 
 love and puddings and garments before they are 
 ten years old ; and I congratulate C. S. Evans on 
 lifting his boot at this convention, though by doing 
 so he has lost the popular success that might other- 
 wise have attended his stories. 
 
 All roads from Crouch End lead uphill ; and it 
 should therefore be a suitable spot for invalids. 
 Indeed, there is something in its manner that sug- 
 gests the valetudinarian — something subdued and 
 heavy and contemplative. You find this " some- 
 thing " at Tunbridge Wells, Buxton, Harrogate, 
 Bath, and other haunts of hypocondriacs. 
 
 A steep hill screens it from the coarse smoke of 
 Finsbury Park, and a steeper hill shelters it from 
 the brisk breezes of Muswell Hill. Whether its air
 
 CROUCH END 181 
 
 is salubrious or not I cannot say. It is certainly 
 mild and untroubled, and seems to lend its pro- 
 perties to the people. Maybe it's the name that 
 gives the place that smell of the thick warmth of 
 many blankets. Repeat it to yourself — Crouch End. 
 It is a good example of onomatopcjeia. One knows 
 what Crouch End will be like, before one sees it. 
 
 Most suburbs are happy in their names. Tooting 
 gives itself away in its name ; so does Bedford Park ; 
 and so with Palmer's Green, Catford, Barking, 
 Camden Town, Bayswater. Each place is so named 
 that the shape of the word betrays its character. 
 And if you say " Crouch End " to yourself many 
 times, you will know as much about it, as if you had 
 read these paragraphs. 
 
 But 1 am grateful to Crouch End for giving me 
 the adventure of the Tin Trunk. On my return 
 journey I took train at Crouch Hill for St. Pancras. 
 It chanced that it was a Saturday night of summer, 
 and my train was a returning Southend train, full 
 to its doorways. I sought the guard's van, and 
 fifteen other travellers made a corner for me. 
 
 Now if I have any rule of life, it is this : that if 
 I cannot enjoy myself, I will enjoy other people. 
 I had much enjoyment of other people on this 
 journey. A heated argument was in progress when 
 I entered. 
 
 A large red-faced man was holding the floor. 
 " I tell you I see it put out at Barking. A tin
 
 182 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 trunk. Black. Lying over there, by you, sir. 
 You saw that porter take it out, didn't you ? " 
 He glared at a small man in a corner, who, thus 
 attacked, shot nervous glances at the floor, and 
 stammered. 
 
 " A black trunk, you said ? A tin one ? Flattish 
 like ? I think I do remember now. At Leyton, 
 you said ? " 
 
 " Leyton ? No ! Barking ! " barked the big 
 man. 
 
 " Oh, I believe I see one put out at Leyton." 
 
 " Right be'ind ! " piped the guard at the door. 
 " What's the argument ? " 
 
 " Why, that genterman over there, on the plat- 
 form — 'is tin trunk. Labelled for Crouch Hill, and 
 it ain't 'ere. Taken out at Barking." 
 
 " Leyton, I think." 
 
 " Oh, well," said the guard, " he'll have to see 
 station-master and ask him to 'phone to Barking, 
 or wherever it was. They'll send it on." 
 
 He blew his whistle, and we steamed out. The 
 company looked at each other and smiled and 
 nodded. The tin trunk had broken the social ice 
 and introduced them. 
 
 " Nice thing," said the barker. " Trunk labelled 
 for Crouch '111, and bang out it goes at Barking. I 
 wondered why they were taking it out, but I 
 always make it my business not to interfere. More 
 muddUng. State Control, they calls it. Baw 
 
 I "
 
 CROUCH END 188 
 
 " I don't remember seeing a tin trunk put out at 
 Barking. I remember a bicycle going out." 
 
 " I see it, now I come to think. Oblong. Black. 
 Lying over there." 
 
 " That's right. Not oblong, though. Not exactly. 
 Nor yet square, neither. Curious shape. I 'ad one 
 like it yers ago." 
 
 " Funny, but the identical same thing 'appened 
 to a brother of mine. He was going up to Liverpool 
 last September — no, October, I fancy. And they 
 put his trunk out at Crewe. Only it wasn't a tin one. 
 It was," he added, as though the difference had 
 damped his enthusiasm for the coincidence, "it was 
 a brown Saratoga." 
 
 " Fm positive I see it go, though I didn't notice 
 the label." 
 
 " I did," barked the big man. " Crouch '111 — as 
 plain as it could be printed. And out it goes at 
 Barking. Only shows you how some people never 
 use their eyes." 
 
 " Leyton, I think it was." 
 
 " I remember sitting on it when I first came in, 
 A black trunk. Tin. Can't say I noticed the label, 
 though." 
 
 At this point we drew into Kentish Town. A 
 porter came to the guard, as he stepped to the 
 platform, and held him in converse for a brief 
 minute. He returned to his van with a sour 
 look.
 
 184 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 " Right be'ind ! " He turned to the big man. 
 " Barking, you say the trunk was put out ? " 
 
 " Yes, Barking." 
 
 " No, Leyton." 
 
 " Sherlock Holmeses you are, ain't yeh ? No tin 
 trunk was put out at Barking. No tin trunk was 
 put out at Leyton." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " Why not ? 'Cos there wasn't no tin trunk ever 
 put on this train. Telephone's just come through. 
 Tin trunk's lying on the platform at Westcliff. 
 Grr ! " 
 
 I
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 
 
 UPON a lovely evening in September a weary 
 pedestrian might have been seen making his 
 way along the chalky ridge which marks the 
 meeting of Kent and London. Undoubtedly he 
 was seen, for it was a Saturday evening, and the 
 spot was Lewisham Broadway, which, at all times 
 loud with traffic, is, on Saturday nights, tumultuous 
 and well-nigh impassable. 
 
 Lewisham Broadway is an affectionate little spot, 
 and well repays any attention bestowed upon it. 
 It stands on the Hastings Road, and is sufficiently 
 near to Greenwich to catch a river-breeze ; and 
 its shrubs are aided in the preservation of their 
 hue by the water of the Ravensbourne, which flows 
 through the Broadway. Its shops are prodigal of 
 plate glass, and are stocked with the " latest " in 
 everything. It has a " Boots " lending library, 
 two or three millinery establishments conducted 
 by " Maude." " Phoebe " and " Irene," and no 
 visible pawnbrokers. This should give you effec- 
 tually the "note" of Lewisham. 
 
 For the rest, it is a capable suburb and full of 
 possibilities, though it has not yet developed a 
 
 185
 
 186 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 corporate life of its own. These little cities, like 
 Lewisham, with their music-halls, their boulevards, 
 their vestries, are still only a fringe of the city. I 
 met nobody who was excited about Lewisham, as 
 other men are excited about Guildford, or Maidstone, 
 or Reading. Why they should not be excited, I 
 do not know ; but if ever you see a suburban resi- 
 dent, suffering under the Maidstone man's praise 
 of his Prison, or the Reading man's ecstasy about 
 his Abbey Ruins, or the Guildford man's lyricism 
 about the Abbot's Hospital or the Grammar School, 
 you do not hear him respond with his Clock Tower 
 or his Public Gardens or his new Fire Station or 
 his old Almshouses. No ; he plays St. Paul's, the 
 Law Courts, Kingsway, the Tower Bridge, West- 
 minster Hall, as though he, of Lewisham or Finchley 
 or Putney, had civic rights in them. 
 
 Lewisham's music-hall lies about a mile distant, 
 at Rushey Green, where the shops are smaller and 
 somewhat cheaper. The road between the two is 
 pleasantly Kned with grass-plots and enclosures of 
 evergreens. It is a broad, brisk road, made by 
 men who knew their job : it goes straight to the 
 point. Rushey Green is the apex of a triangle of 
 obscure suburbs— St. John's, Brockley, Crofton Park, 
 Nunhead, Hither Green and Ladywell. I wonder 
 by what abstruse system fame is accorded to suburbs ? 
 Why is one taken and the other left ? Why are 
 some known throughout the English-speaking world.
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 187 
 
 wfiile others, of similar characteristics, are scarcely 
 names even to those of central London ? Why are 
 Tooting and Surbiton known contumeliously to men 
 in Galashiels, Cleckheaton, Runcorn Gap and Piddle- 
 ford, while Crofton Park, Hatcham, Anerley, Earls- 
 field, CoHier's Wood, remain uncelebrated ? Anerley 
 may, perhaps, be known beyond London by the 
 antics of one of its natives, who was celebrated in 
 a limerick. You know it ? The one about the old 
 fellow of Anerley, whose conduct was strange and 
 unmannerly ? But these other places are without 
 honour. They are not even flattered by a share 
 of that scorn which is delivered so regularly by 
 smart papers to Upper Tooting and Surbiton. Why 
 they are thus ignored, I cannot say. They seem to 
 me to possess all the best points of a truly pedigree 
 suburb. 
 
 Rushey Green and Catford, its near neighbour, 
 lack the bright content of Lewisham. The houses 
 are small, and the bulk of its people leave it each 
 morning by the early trains, after a half-masticated 
 breakfast. There are, you may not know, three 
 classes in every suburb, the members of which travel 
 the same road for any distance, yet never meet. 
 There is the class that catches the 7.30, the class 
 that catches the 8.45, and the class that catches 
 anything between the 10.15 and the 10.50. One 
 feels about the people of Catford and Rushey Green 
 that the third class is not represented among them.
 
 188 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 They have not the air of being settled. They are 
 only living at Catford and Rushey Green until the 
 chance of better things presents itself. 
 
 I do not blame them. The suburbs south of the 
 river are by no means so " desirable " as those on 
 the Northern Heights. They are still rather more 
 of Surrey and Kent than of London, with the worst 
 features of both. There is no sharp dividing line 
 between town and country, as in the North. South 
 London, being greedy, has gobbled up territory 
 more quickly than North London, and has not so 
 thoroughly assimilated it. South London is a ragged 
 back-skirt of London, trailed in the chalky dust of 
 Kent and the brown grit of Surrey. It reminds 
 one of the chill, bare travesty of country that one 
 finds in Lancashire, around the mining towns. 
 
 I looked at the Lewisham Hippodrome and found 
 it, externally, not offensive. I then inspected its 
 bill and recognized many of the names. It has 
 long been a standing reproach against us, among 
 the French, that, as a nation, we take our pleasures 
 sadly. That may or may not be true, but it is 
 certain that we take our pleasures uncritically. So 
 far from taking our pleasures sadly, we are most 
 easily amused. We sit through and applaud any 
 old thing, provided it is put over with sufficient 
 reclame. We laugh loudly at, and pay big money 
 to men who would be hissed off any Continental 
 stage.
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 189 
 
 Visit a music-hall in cold blood, and you will 
 agree with me. First, there is the insolence of the 
 " house " towards its patrons. The staff keeps them 
 waiting outside the doors until such time as they 
 choose to open ; they pack them into the cheap 
 seats like pressed figs — " Now, close up, there ! 
 Make room for one more, there ! Keep order there ! " 
 — and, generally, treat them as charitable societies 
 treat applicants for relief. Then the " bill," too, 
 treats them in the most casual manner. Turn 
 No. I on the programme is usually an " Overture," 
 unnamed. Really, it is a military march, and the 
 band gallops through it ; and, studying the con- 
 venience of the people who really matter — the 
 stage people — stops in the middle of the coda, and 
 re-starts a second later with the " symphony " of 
 turn No. 2. 
 
 The performers, throughout the evening, pay 
 little attention to the audience. They jest with 
 the conductor and members of the orchestra, and 
 walk through their turns as though the whole thing 
 were a beastly nuisance. They indulge in dialogue 
 of a purely personal kind, and address one another 
 by their Christian names, and make silly, obscure 
 jokes about members of their profession, whose 
 affairs cannot possibly interest the audience. Hardly 
 a dozen people in any given audience follow the 
 drift of these professional allusions ; yet the whole 
 house is kind enough to laugh — which is proof of
 
 190 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 the Englishman's traditional tenderness for the 
 feelings of those who take liberties with him. But 
 it is very bad for the artists. It makes them 
 bumptious in manner and slack in work. 
 
 Sometimes the " star " turn of the bill cannot 
 appear, and a deputy is sent on. You may have 
 paid your money to see that one particular turn ; 
 but try to get your money back from the box office. 
 Recovering overpaid Income Tax from Somerset 
 House is a facile enterprise against this. 
 
 Lingering outside the hall, in the October twi- 
 light, I heard from some dim byway, faint and 
 sweet and far-away, that dirge of Autumn, the last 
 of London's street cries : 
 
 Won't you buy-uy-uy-uy 
 My sweet blooming laaaaaa- 
 venderrrr ? 
 There are sixteeeeeeeen 
 Fine bran-shes — 
 
 er pen-neeeee. 
 
 It is an elegiac cry that is suited to dim suburban 
 byways. It seems to hold in its cadences the inward 
 yearning of all suburbs. It seemed to me, then, to 
 express the very soul of Rushey Green. Compare 
 it with that other cry which is still sometimes heard : 
 
 Any ole iron ? 
 Rag boddler bo ! 
 
 There is heartiness in this. I don't know why 
 empty bottles, greasy bones, cold iron, and soiled
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 191 
 
 rags should inspire the wandering buyer with cheeri- 
 ness ; one would rather think that the hawkers of 
 sweet-smelHng lavender should have the cheery 
 note, and the " boddler bo " the heart -cry of the 
 lavender man. English cussedness, I suppose. 
 
 Of the street cries that I remember hearing in 
 my childhood, it was always the man with the un- 
 pleasant job who had the uplifting note. The 
 dustman, grimy, with throat and nose clogged with 
 small ash, came always to the door with a kind of 
 " Here-we-are-again " cry of " Dust-oh ! " as who 
 should say : " Who cares ? " But the coalman, who 
 was delivering goods and receiving money for them, 
 came with a lugubrious wail of despair, rising and 
 falling in a minor key : 
 
 " One-an-two the 'underd ! " 
 
 And the black man with the black sticks and black 
 sack had a demoniac yell in the upper register, very 
 fitting to his figure : " Sweeeeeep ! " 
 
 If you refer to James Hindley's book on Old 
 London Cries, you will realize how much persuasive 
 music has gone from the streets ; " improved " away. 
 The street-sellers of the period with which he deals, 
 the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, 
 were mostly women ; and it must have been delight- 
 ful to hear their voices crying " Cherry Ripe ! " 
 " New-born eggs — crack 'em and try 'em ! " " Fresh 
 sweet posies ! " " Buy my brandy-balls ! " " Buy
 
 192 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 my saveloys ! " " Dumplings, ho ! " " Colly-molly 
 pufEs ! " " Round and sound, fivepence a pound, 
 scarlet strawberries ! " 
 
 I was musing thus when, so it seemed to me, I 
 evoked a London crier from the ground at my feet ; 
 for a voice close to my ear burst into song : 
 
 Up an' down the City Road, 
 In and out the Eagle, 
 
 That's the way the money goes, 
 Pop I goes the weasel. 
 
 " Wanter buy a stud, mate ? " 
 
 I looked round, and found the stud-merchant at 
 my elbow. 
 
 " Thought I'd run across you again somewhere. 
 'Ow y'orf fer bootlaces ? " 
 
 I bought a pair of bootlaces, and led him across 
 the road, his tongue pacing his feet. 
 
 " I gotter bone to pick with you, young man. 
 Slipping orf and leaving me like that, at Enfield. 
 I didn't 'arf 'ave a time." 
 
 " How ? You knew where to get the car, didn't 
 you ? " 
 
 " Yerce, 'tain't that. But I got in with a bunch 
 of nice boys, in the little place next the Church, 
 and I sung 'em a song or two, and they made a fair 
 fuss o' me, and — well, you know 'ow it is when you 
 get in with a nice bunch o' boys. Ten o'clock it 
 was when I left there — leastways, I s'pose I left —
 
 LEWISHAM AND RUSHEY GREEN 198 
 
 I don't remember. I know I copped out when I 
 got 'ome." 
 
 " Well, have you made any new songs ? I want 
 one about Rushey Green or Lewisham." 
 
 " No, I ain't bin in no song mood lately. Roaming 
 round the town with studs and bootlaces is all right 
 in the summer-time, as Mark Sheridan used to say, 
 but it's no game for this weather. Green grow the 
 rushes-0 ! — don't seem to fit, does it, with October. 
 Who wants to think of green damp things like rushes ? 
 'Ere — I got a new line." 
 
 He planked down his little case, and opened it, 
 and produced a small dummy figure of Mr. Lloyd 
 George, carried out, as the dressmakers say, in 
 American leather. He seized this figure by the 
 middle, and pinched it, when it shot out an impudent 
 tongue of red rubber, upon which was printed : " A 
 land fit for heroes." 
 
 He had given it but two pinches, when the land- 
 lord bought one, and carried it across the bar. When 
 I left Studdy, he had a clamouring group of ex- 
 Service men about him, holding out their fourpences 
 for a copy of their particular Cenotaph. 
 
 18
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 
 
 I LIKE Stratford. It is joyously Cockney, while 
 retaining the external charms of a country 
 market town. It has a theatre, a music-hall, 
 three time-worn inns, and the Broadway, which is a 
 separate delight, amalgamating the charms of the 
 others. The Parish Church, a mere infant as a 
 London church — it was built in 1835 — was erected as 
 a memorial of the Stratford martyrs who suffered 
 on the green in the sixteenth century. High Street, 
 Stratford-Langthorne, which begins at Bow Bridge 
 and curls round Bow Church, is a straggling lane 
 of tumbling cottages and over-hanging shops ; very 
 aromatic ; for alongside Bow Creek are chemical, 
 gas, oil, varnish, and pickle factories ; and the 
 Northern Outfall Sewer works its way here to the 
 river at Barking Creek. 
 
 The first Bow Bridge was erected at orders of 
 Matilda in the twelfth century, and remained until 
 1839. It was in charge of the Abbess of Barking, 
 upon whom fell the duty of repairing and main- 
 taining it. When a monastery was founded at 
 Stratford, the Abbess, with an air of presenting a 
 substantial gift, made over the bridge to the Abbot, 
 
 194
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 195 
 
 who got into trouble with Edward II for delegating 
 his duties to a knave who recouped himself by 
 demanding tolls from even the poorest passengers. 
 
 To-day, neither monastery nor nunnery may be 
 seen ; the inns only are a souvenir of times past. 
 
 And so I came by foot to Plaistow. Plaistow 
 seems to be full of beans. Not bands and bugles, 
 but beans. Beans, so Eustace Miles avers, feed the 
 brain, and the Plaistovians seem to be a brainy lot. 
 When a Plaistovian has knocked off work, and has 
 a quiet half-hour, he doesn't waste time at the 
 billiards table or by picking out long losers ; he 
 sits down and has a good read. Something light, 
 like Kropotkin on " Fields, Factories and Workshops," 
 Locke on the " Human Understanding," Adam Smith 
 on the "Wealth of Nations," or Treitschke on the 
 "Economic Determination of History." That's the 
 kind of chap he is. 
 
 At least, I deduce that from the fact that every 
 third or fourth building seems to be a branch of 
 some political or municipal club, social club, organi- 
 zation, federation, or brotherhood. The men of 
 Plaistow, I would say, think for themselves, and, 
 judging from some discussions I overheard, think 
 to some firm purpose. When a member of the 
 courtly world, or one of their leaders of Cabinet 
 rank, comes down to them, and tells them Thus 
 and Thus and So and So, they want to know Why. 
 This is most disconcerting. I do not envy the
 
 196 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 speaker who has to face them as audience. Imagine 
 being asked, in the first stages of your preamble, 
 when your mind is already fully distended with 
 a flatulent address, what Karl Marx said about 
 seasonal fluctuations ! Imagine having chunks of 
 Adam Smith toppled into the middle of your pet 
 anecdote about the leader of the rival party ! Even 
 the women of Plaistow seem to know the meaning 
 of " economics." 
 
 At East Ham the air is a little easier. Bands 
 and bugles and recreation grounds are more popular 
 here than beans and the economic determination 
 of history. Of history, though, it has plenty. 
 
 Domesday Book mentions most of the parishes 
 in this corner of the East ; and the names of vicars 
 of the local church begin with him of 1328, That 
 a Roman colony existed here was proved by the 
 remains revealed by the excavations for the Outfall 
 Sewer ; and a manor of East and West Ham was 
 in existence long before the Normans. Its most 
 notable relic, perhaps, is Green Street House, known 
 as Anne Boleyn's Castle, now a school for boys. 
 
 Records do not confirm the story that it was 
 built for her by Henry VIII, who later imprisoned 
 her there, but it is certainly a mansion of that period, 
 and the local authorities have so far accepted the 
 story as to name the adjoining roads in harmony 
 with it — Boleyn Road, Cleves Road, Parr Road, 
 Aragon Road and Seymour Road — whose names
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 197 
 
 are five sad discords. Why Katherine Howard is 
 not celebrated, I do not know. 
 
 In the nomenclature of other of its streets the 
 Council has happily followed the custom of Paris 
 and perpetuated the names of famous men ; and 
 the random perfume of literature is wafted across 
 the crowded meadows of brick. Prose is celebrated 
 in Barking Road by Thackeray Road, Dickens Road, 
 Macaulay Road ; and the poets are remembered in 
 High Street North by Coleridge Road, Goldsmith 
 Avenue, Shelley Avenue, Byron Avenue, Words- 
 worth Avenue, Tennyson Avenue and Shakespeare 
 Crescent. 
 
 In Plashet, a ward of the Borough of East Ham, 
 lived Ehzabeth Fry, the Newgate reformer, but the 
 house was demolished many years ago. Her memory, 
 however, is celebrated by Ehzabeth Road, and the 
 tale of her labours seems to have lent inspiration to 
 the local Council. There is no smarter authority 
 than this in London. Its Town Hall strikes the 
 eye with an agreeable shock ; and the numerous 
 public libraries and branch libraries, technical col- 
 lege and trim parks and gardens, show that it serves 
 its burgesses as a Council should — namely, as keenly 
 as though it were a commercial cnterprize out for 
 a profit. Even Bonny Downs, its poorest quarter, 
 is not so dilapidated as some parts of Bayswater 
 and Notting Hill. 
 
 High Street, North, its shopping centre, is a
 
 198 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 slapdash, rakish thoroughfare, with a touch of 
 " I-don't-care-what-becomes-of-me " about it. It is 
 never dull. Something is always " up " in High 
 Street North ; a horse has fallen down, or a tram 
 has jolted a 'bus, or Mrs. Boffin is " putting it across " 
 an overcharging tradesman. One never lacks enter- 
 tainment here. If it reflects the spirit of the East 
 Ham people, then they are a very jolly sort. 
 
 Indeed, they are, and they seem to know it. One 
 enterprising business man has named himself Happy 
 Jack. His advertisement remains in my memory : 
 
 Be a Profiteer ! 
 
 Bring your Rags, Bones, Bottles, Iron, etc., to 
 
 Happy Jack. 
 
 All children bringing stuff on Saturday morn- 
 ing have a free dip in the Silver Bran Tub. 
 
 All the kids love Happy Jack. 
 
 Other business men, not so breezy as Happy 
 Jack, decorate their stalls with exhortations and 
 appeals to the ethical sense, as : " Live and Let 
 Live," " We serve you as we would like to be served," 
 " Our Motto is : Small profits, quick returns," 
 and so on. Mottoes seem to be generally popular 
 in East Ham. In one house where I took refresh- 
 ment, the walls were covered with gaily scrolled 
 mottoes — fifteen I counted, of which the most terse 
 was this : " Please don't leave your glasses on the
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 199 
 
 seat, as the practice is dangerous for your seats and 
 my glasses." 
 
 The local guide-book comes to a conclusion with 
 which I am in full accord — " Certainly ' dull ' is 
 the last quality one would apply to the Borough." 
 There are residents of East Ham who speak of it 
 as having " gone down " ; who remember it — not^ 
 when it was all " vealds," but when it was a select 
 residential suburb. Well, it may have lost some of 
 its gigmanity, but it retains much else that is good. 
 The houses for the most part are humble of aspect, 
 and the shops keep in tune with them. But there 
 is plenty of Tapley-ism about. People have work 
 to do in these parts, and are not ashamed of being 
 caught at it. They take the day's dish of toil with 
 relish. With what gusto they go about it — cleaning, 
 getting the children to school, grumbling, getting 
 the dinner, mending, grumbling, getting the chil- 
 dren's tea, washing-up, getting father's supper, 
 grumbling, bathing the nippers, getting food ready 
 for the morning, and grumbling. 
 
 Throughout the day these infelicitous streets are 
 clattering with household tools and voices, for gossip 
 is a great elbow-greaser ; and windows and steps 
 are cleaned, and the day's chores performed, the 
 day's grumbles delivered, in, as the phrase goes, 
 " no time." 
 
 There are those who, from a hurried visit, might 
 return to speak of the afflictions of the East-
 
 200 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Hammers. They may save their tears and prepare 
 to shed them about the fatigued squares of Bel- 
 gravia. A longer visit would show them rich jollity, 
 arising from hard work, enough to eat without 
 luxury, and a little time in which to grumble over 
 the nature of things. If they make ends meet here, 
 they are as happy as the Chairman of a wholesale 
 grocery company announcing to his shareholders 
 that the profits for the past year, after deducting 
 excess profits tax, show an increase of £40,000 over 
 those of the past two years. And there are the 
 Boot Club, the Clothing Club, the Christmas Goose 
 Club, and the Slate Club ; and they get more joy 
 from watching the amounts grow on the cards of 
 each club than the man of means can get from an 
 examination of his pass-book. 
 
 The bright bustle of High Street North, on Satur- 
 day evenings, is sufficient reply to those who croak 
 of the miseries of the poor. Were these croakers 
 permitted to bring into the lives of the poor the 
 " simple " happiness which they so frequently ex- 
 pound in pamphlets, then the poor certainly would 
 have misery enough to write home about. They 
 don't want young University people's ideas on 
 baby-management and house-management. They 
 don't want their play-centres (the very Prussianism 
 of philanthropy), their organized joy, and their mock 
 revivals of the pleasures of three centuries gone. 
 They want the joy of to-day, and they jolly well get it.
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 201 
 
 They don't want to be educated in the game of 
 rejoicing. It is not an art ; it is a pastime, and 
 anybody can play it. They don't want the thin- 
 faced people with their Leagues of Art and Leagues 
 of Play. Why should they allow their children to 
 be dressed up in the costumes of three centuries 
 past, and to be set at singing dismal songs chosen 
 by the lantern-jawed League leaders ? It is not 
 as though the songs chosen are beautiful songs or 
 jolly songs. They are not, for they are chosen by 
 the League leaders. They are chosen because they 
 are three hundred years old. And these fatuous 
 people want the children to dance the morris dance ; 
 not because it is beautiful, but because it is three 
 hundred years old. An impartial examination of 
 the dance, and a study of old pamphlets, will show 
 that the morris-dance is just as vulgar and immoral 
 as jazz and the fox-trot — no more and no less. 
 
 Without doubt the hideous six-storey tenements 
 which our cold-lipped philanthropists have thrown 
 up here and there in our poorer districts are more 
 hygienic and altogether better value for the wretched 
 poor than the insanitary little houses of two or 
 three rooms. But they are not homes. In the 
 combat between hygiene and personal comfort, I 
 know which side I'm on, and I know which side 
 the wretched poor are on. A sky-line corner in 
 a battlemented barracks is not a home. Those 
 compact little cottages are unhealthy, you say ?
 
 202 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Yes, but great fun ; and, as our leading vaudeville 
 lady has sung : "A little of what you fancy does 
 you good ! " So long as it is what you fancy, and 
 not what others think would be good for you. 
 
 East Ham has its Allotment Holders' Association, 
 its Cage-Bird Society, its Palace of Varieties, bright 
 picture-palaces, its High Street North, and its Mum 
 Society. This last puzzled me when I first heard 
 of it. I figured it as, possibly, a Quaker Society, or 
 a Society of Codgers or some secret friendly society ; 
 I have since learnt that it is " short " for the 
 Chrysanthemum Society. 
 
 Being within walking distance of Forest Gate, 
 I went there to see the " Spotted Dog," for its asso- 
 ciations with the Plague Year ; and very pleasant 
 I found it, with its rose pergolas, bowling green and 
 gardens. Here, from 1665-6, gathered the merchants 
 and brokers from St. Paul's to transact their 
 business ; the equivalent in their day of the bomb- 
 dodgers of more recent days. 
 
 As the brokers of 1917 put the fifty miles of the 
 Brighton Road between themselves and London, so 
 did the brokers of those days keep six open miles 
 between themselvei and the City. Outside the 
 " Dog " I met a celebrated local character, Sing-a- 
 song Joe, demonstrating the origin of his name. 
 
 About him stood a cluster of youths and boys, 
 and, when his unseemly song was done, he collected 
 from the youths, with much badinage, a cigarette,
 
 STRATFORD TO EAST HAM 203 
 
 and went happily on his way to fresh business. 
 He is not a professional public entertainer. His 
 method is to approach his man or youth, and ask, 
 in the friendliest manner, for a cigarette or a share 
 of any delicacy that the other may be carrying or 
 consuming, promising in return — or, as some have 
 it, threatening — to sing the benefactor a song. It 
 is a pleasant practice, since the urban vagabond is 
 so fast being driven from the streets. It is a return 
 to the practice of other days, but it was not organized 
 by the committee of any League of Arts ; it is 
 Joe's own idea. 
 
 To-day he is alone in this line ; in years past he 
 would have had to face serious rivalry. I picture 
 the " Spotted Dog," with the mum-faced brokers 
 gathered within, and half-a-dozen Sing-a-song Joes, 
 sHpping heads round its doors with : " How now, 
 sirs ? A merry stave or so ? A catch, a glee ?" 
 followed by wrangles among the minstrels for first 
 turn. 
 
 Master Philip Stubbes— he must have been one 
 of those sober-side brokers — rated them soundly in 
 a pamphlet, referring to " such drunken sockets and 
 buffoons as range the countreyes, ryming and sing- 
 ing of corrupt and filthie songs in taverns, ale-houses, 
 innes, and other pubUque assemblies." Well, Sing- 
 a-song Joe has the satisfaction of knowing that he 
 is the last of a great line. 
 
 My otherwise delightful evening at East Ham
 
 204 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 was marred by one small contretemps, for which 
 I blame the tramways authorities. I suggest that 
 they diversify the type in which they announce the 
 destination of their cars. I saw a car labelled in 
 large capitals RADOCKS. I had never heard of 
 Radocks, and had never seen it on the map ; so, 
 filled with the lust of the explorer, I felt that I must 
 go there, and I boarded that car. I will not record 
 here what I said to myself when it set me down at 
 the Royal Albert Docks.
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 
 
 THE Barking Road goes to Barking and stops 
 there, unlike the Romford Road, which con- 
 tinues to go to Romford after it has got there. 
 The Barking Road goes bang into Barking, and 
 forms the upright of a T to a cross-road. The 
 scenery along the road is more elegiac than romantic. 
 There are the ruins of the old windmill standing 
 amid the marshes of Wallend ; there is the sleepy 
 river Roding ; and the outlook from either side 
 is fiat, bare and bleak : void land and inhospitable 
 distances. Here the lips of the Thames dribble into 
 little docks and canals, whose purpose I have never 
 discovered, for I have never yet seen them in use. 
 Barking itself is a medieval town, even to-day 
 not fully modernized. It has a venerable appear- 
 ance, as it should have, for here stood, in the seventh 
 century, the richest of all Benedictine nunneries in 
 this country. Of its old Abbey nothing was left 
 standing, when Harry of England had done with it, 
 save the old gateway, which still stands near the 
 terminus of the Ealing-Barking motor-bus service. 
 Its streets are narrow and winding and marked with 
 poverty. It might be an old seaside town, fallen 
 
 203
 
 206 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 into disrepute ; an illusion occasionally heightened 
 by a breath of Southend air brought up by the 
 tide. Beyond it is nothing but a sorry plain of 
 villages, mean and tawdry; for this is the London 
 edge of Essex, whose greater part has always been 
 forlorn of mien. 
 
 Dilapidation strikes the eye at every corner. 
 The London edges of all home counties seem out 
 of tune with town and with country ; but of them 
 all Essex seems least able to pull itself together 
 and develop self-respect. You should, however, 
 venture into the wastes to see Eastbury Manor 
 House, a noble Tudor mansion, that bears com- 
 parison with Hampton Court. From its sixteenth 
 century dignity it fell to the squalid uses of a farm- 
 house, and was so used until a year ago. Then the 
 National Trust stepped in and acquired it as a place 
 of historic interest. At the time of writing the 
 Trust is appealing for the sum of £5,000, the estimated 
 cost of necessary repairs. 
 
 Barking gave me a bright moment. I called at 
 a bar near the Gateway for casual refreshment, and 
 there met the cultured barmaid. A dispute on the 
 matter of wrong change was at its heat when I 
 entered. The disputants were the barmaid and a 
 slip of a fellow in Newmarket leggings. 
 
 " I know it was 'alf-a-crown," he was insisting. 
 " I 'adn't got no two-shilling pieces. I shouldn't 
 say it was if it wasn't. I ain't one of those. I
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 207 
 
 always deal fair and I expect others to deal fair. 
 I don't make mistakes in money. I know what 
 I 'ad in me pockets, don't I ? That was 'alf-a- 
 crown what I give yeh. I don't say you're trying 
 to cheat me. You thought it was a two-shilHng- 
 piece. But it wasn't. I ain't a man to swear 
 black's white. I never " 
 
 Then came the bright moment. " Oh, shut up," 
 snapped the lady. " It was two shilHngs. You 
 and your explanations ! You should remember the 
 old proverb : Qui s' excuse s' accuse ! " 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer should have heard the sharp 
 flick of the tongue with which the lady from Barking 
 gave out that s'accuse. She spoke it not as they 
 speak at Stratford-atte-Bowe. Coquelin could not 
 have done it better. That word from her had a 
 more wilting effect on the poor punter than if she 
 had used that English phrase to which it bears some 
 phonetic likeness. That, I doubt not, he could 
 have answered. But for Qui s'excuse s'accuse he 
 had no answer. He finished his drink and slunk 
 out. 
 
 From Barking I turned a little on my steps, for 
 I wished to finish my tramp at Woolwich, and the 
 only way thither was by the road that crosses the 
 Northern Outfall and goes through Cyprus and by 
 the Albert Dock. Between Beckton and Manor 
 Way lies lost the little colony of Cyprus. Close 
 here are the awesome gasworks of the Gas Light
 
 208 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 and Coke Company. Natives will tell you that 
 these works are kept in trim by some 3,000 toilers. 
 This is impressive to those to whom figures convey 
 anything. To me they convey nothing ; the gas- 
 works themselves are sufficiently exciting without 
 a robe of figures. To see those towers and gaso- 
 meters, as I saw them, against a cloudless twilight, 
 is to receive a shock of wonder. Themselves hideous, 
 they do, in that cold setting, achieve a certain gaunt 
 and arresting beauty. To one of them Childe Roland 
 might have come. 
 
 It is the staff of these works that mostly peoples 
 Cyprus, though the men of Albert Dock also have 
 made their homes in its grey streets. Who first 
 forced by nomenclature the association with the 
 Mediterranean Sea of this frigid, dusty region, I 
 know not. Some sardonic wag, I guess. Here the 
 four winds and their many branch-winds seem to 
 meet in the leaden light of evening. It is exposed 
 to the river, to the flats of Plumstead and to the 
 marshes of Dagenham. At the doors of the square 
 brick boxes that are its houses lounge or sit the 
 men ; about the stony streets the children gambol ; 
 and from slatternly windows peer the women. The 
 men are cheerful fellows, apt and companionable. 
 In this Cyprus they cannot live and lie reclined . . . 
 careless of mankind. In the adjacent Albert Dock 
 and its railway station, Gallions, work proceeds by 
 day and night. From year to year steam-hammer,
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 209 
 
 crane, syren, hooter, bell, anvil and pick perform 
 their rough music ; iron against iron, steel against 
 steel, with a little chorus of nail and rivet ; and 
 through the night the shunting of trucks makes 
 a melancholy fugue. It is one long-drawn hysteria 
 of toil. Great gouts of arc-light break the body of 
 the dusk at a hundred points. Men come and go 
 in haste ; and through the stupendous clamour 
 tramps and destroyers crawl with an air of easy 
 idleness. It was once the fashion to say " Clapham 
 Junction " as an expression of turmoil and clangour 
 in the highest ; but Cyprus has outsoared the 
 Junction. It is one everlasting hosanna of noise, 
 and it is difficult to discover what it is all about. 
 The workmen do not try to make a noise ; they 
 go about their business cheerily and sedately, and 
 in no one corner is noise seriously created. Yet 
 vehement noise beats about it day and night. 
 
 But why attempt to transmit Cyprus by words ? 
 One needs a Brobdingnagian chisel in place of pen, 
 a mountain of stone for paper, and an army of 
 jazz-band performers to work it. 
 
 Lingering about the streets I discovered that its 
 folk employ for their less sober conversation that 
 terrible medium, rhyming-slang. For this outrage 
 on the English language there is no justification of 
 any kind. The old canting tongue is a dialect, 
 skilfully invented ; but this farrago of sense and 
 sound is sheer perversion. A secret language, how- 
 
 14
 
 210 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 ever complex, one can admire : it is usually cleverly 
 made and there is a reason for it. In the crowded 
 areas of London it is difficult for the rogue to pass 
 information meant for a single ear, and avoid the 
 danger of its reaching other ears. Wherefore — code 
 language. Most of these languages derive from 
 the Romany. Lads of the roads picked up the 
 stuff, and it was soon passed from one to another, 
 being changed, as it passed, to suit the occasions 
 of those who acquired it. Then it began to pass 
 through the usual channels of publicity — race-meet- 
 ings, saloons, and music-halls, which have a much 
 wider range than the press — so that it became 
 twisted, until scarcely any trace of the original 
 Romany remains. The reason for this twisting is 
 that, as soon as a new code is formulated, it is " blown 
 upon " by somebody, and becomes known to the 
 enemies of those whom it was designed to protect : 
 to policemen, narks, pawnbrokers and the public. 
 But rhyming-slang has no such high purpose to 
 justify its invention. It is not a secret language ; 
 it gives itself away at once. It is a vain dislocation 
 of current words, and its sole intention seems to 
 be to show that the user is right up-to-date in 
 London ways. As an example : 
 
 " Well, old pot, let's go and have a skating. I 
 told the worry I should be water. I got plenty o' 
 bees on me." 
 
 More esoteric and useful was the canting language
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 211 
 
 of the seventeenth century, which Dekker exposes 
 in his Lanthorne and Candlelight, thus : 
 
 " Stow you bene cove and cut benar whiddes and bing 
 we to Rome vile to nip a bung ; so shall we have lowre for 
 the bowsing ken, and when we beng back to the Dewse-a- 
 vile we will filch some duddes off the ruffmans or mill the 
 ken for a lag of duddes." 
 
 This presents little difficulty to the reader of 
 to-day, for, since Dekker, Henley and Farmer have 
 exposed the cant tongue, and there are few words 
 in the above whose meanings are not known. It 
 is worth noting, by the way, how closely Henley's 
 translation of Villon's ballad in slang resembles 
 Dekker 's verse in Cant : 
 
 The Ruffin cly the nab of the Harmanbeck, 
 
 If we mawnd Pannam, lap or Ruff-peck, 
 
 Or poplars of yarum : he cuts, bing to the Ruffmans, 
 
 Or els he sweares by the Light-mans, 
 
 To put our stamps in the Harmans. 
 
 The ruffin cly the ghost of the Harmanbeck, 
 
 If we heave a booth we cly the Jerke. 
 
 If we niggle, or mill a bowsing ken. 
 
 Or nip a bung that has but a win. 
 
 Or dup the giger of a gentry cove's ken. 
 
 To the quier cuffing we bing. 
 
 And then to the quier Ken, to scowre the cramp-ring, 
 
 And then to the Trin'de on the chates, in the Lightmans. 
 
 The Bube and Ruffin cly the Harmanbeck and Harmans. 
 
 Of which Dekker supplies the English of his time : 
 
 The Devill take the constable's head ; 
 
 If we beg bacon, butter-milk or bread 
 
 Or pottage, to the hedge he bids us hie, 
 
 Or swears {by his light) i' th' stocks we shall lie.
 
 212 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 The devill haunt the constable's ghost. 
 
 If we but rob a booth, ive are whipped at post. 
 
 If an ale-house we rob, or be ta'en with a whore. 
 
 Or cut a purse that has a penny and no mor$. 
 
 Or come but stealing in at a Gentleman's door — 
 
 t/w/o the Justice straight we go, 
 
 Then to the Jayle to be shackled. And so 
 
 To be hanged on the gallowes i'th daytime. The pox 
 
 And the devill take the constable and his stocks. 
 
 On the philosophy of Cant he is worth hearing : 
 
 " Now as touching the dialect or phrase itself, I see not 
 that it is grounded upon any certain rules. And no marvel 
 if it have none, for since both the Father of this new kind 
 of learning, and the children that study to speake it after 
 him, have beene from the beginning and still are, the Breeders 
 and Nourishers of a base disorder in their living and in their 
 manners ; how is it possible they should observe any Method 
 in their speech, and especially in such a Language as serves 
 but only to utter discourses of villainy ? And yet (even out 
 of all that Irregularity, unhandsomenesse and Fountaine of 
 barbarisme) do they draw a kind of Forme ; and in some 
 words (as well simple as compounds) retaine a certaine salte 
 tasting of some wit and Learning. As for example, they 
 call a cloake (in the Canting tongue) a Togeman ; and in 
 Latin, Toga signifies a gowne, or an upper garment. Pannam 
 is bread ; and Panis in Latin is likewise bread ; caesan is 
 cheese, and is a word barbarously coyned out of the sub- 
 stantive Caseus which also signifies a cheese. 
 
 Within less than fourscore years (now past) not a word 
 of this language was knowen. The first inventor of it was 
 hang'd ; yet left he apt schollers behind him, who have 
 reduced it into Methode which he could not so absolutely 
 perfect as he desired. The Language therefore of canting, 
 they study even from their infancy, that is to say from the 
 very first houre that they take upon them the names of 
 Kinchin coves, till they are grown Rufflers or Upright 
 Men which are the highest in degree among them." 
 
 But of this Cyprus knows and cares nothing. 
 For conversation on matters of no privacy at all, 
 
 I
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 213 
 
 it is content to employ the sticky medium of rhyming- 
 slang — with rhyme, but certainly without reason. 
 
 From Cyprus it is an easy walk to North Wool- 
 wich, where one may take the lumbering ferry to 
 Woolwich proper. The Thames hete flows with 
 conscious pride ; and at the hour when I reached 
 it the lights of Woolwich and of the Dockyard gave 
 it added lustre. Great rivers, like beautiful girls, 
 reserve their major charms for the night, and should 
 first be seen at night. The morning character of 
 the Thames is not without charm, but it lacks the 
 rich hues and fluent outlines of the night. At early 
 morning the many delicate spires of either bank 
 toss one to the other the new sunlight, and the 
 scum of the water glistens like hoarded wealth, and 
 the eye receives a false effect of spaciousness, and 
 the grimed buildings seem to be blown clean by 
 the early wind. But in the evening the day's fair 
 points of beauty are obscured, and new objects, 
 unperceived by day, arrange themselves and assume 
 the foreground of the picture. The morning has its 
 flashes of beauty, fleeting aspects, grey cloud above 
 red brick, brown scaffolding against torn skies, but 
 these effects are isolated. They arc, so to speak, 
 a tuning-up for the grand symphony of the night. 
 
 Too few Londoners know their own river. You 
 cannot scrape acquaintance with a river from its 
 bridges and embankments ; to know it yon must 
 travel with it ; and now that the Council steamboats
 
 214 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 are no more, there is little opportunity for mingling 
 with the thickening life of the trafhc-ridden reach 
 of London's river, which Zola likened to "an aquatic 
 Rue de Rivoli." Your only chance lies in en- 
 countering a friendly bargee ; and, as they say, he 
 wants a bit of finding. But the barge is the true 
 and good vehicle of river travel, its style suiting 
 perfectly the occasion ; and if you are so fortunate 
 as to secure a passage with a Jolly Young Water- 
 man, you will gladly forget the steam vessels and 
 their crowded decks. 
 
 A journey by barge from the Isle of Dogs to 
 Chelsea is a noble journey. At Chelsea the Thames, 
 as pleasure-resort, definitely ends, and thence, to 
 the Isle of Dogs, it is the Thames industrial. It 
 is this stretch of the river that is properly London's 
 river ; and all the varied life of the thousand acres 
 of the city is epitomised in these eight narrow 
 miles of water. Those whose humour turns to the 
 trivialities of travel may have beguiled themselves 
 at times with a mental catalogue of river-music. 
 All rivers have their song : some lyrical, some 
 jingly, some plaintive, and some swelling and sigh- 
 ing. There is the song of the Severn in Worcester, 
 so sharply marked from that of the Trent that, 
 by hearing alone, one could name the one from the 
 other. The tourist will recall, too, the slumber-song 
 of the Ouse at Bedford, the fretfulness of the Med- 
 way, the croon of the Arun, the fuss and bustle of
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 215 
 
 the Humber, and the dirge of the Exe. And all 
 this varied music is gathered into one stormy sym- 
 phony in the Thames at London, from the mellow 
 grace of Chelsea to the ignoble austerities of Bugsby 
 Marshes. 
 
 By Chelsea, which sits in feminine repose, decked 
 with its rosary of great names, the river flows 
 serenely, as though conscious of the inspiration it 
 has afforded the artist. At Westminster it assumes 
 befitting dignity, and becomes surely the river of 
 a great capital : there is deep throb in its movement. 
 Below London Bridge the pace and volume of 
 sound increase, and the music of its motion is a 
 pompous march proper to commerce and motley 
 enterprise. The very hues of the water seem to 
 change with the changing song. From Chelsea to 
 Bankside it is a deep grey ; at the Tower, where 
 its surface is littered with a diversity of craft, it 
 throws up every shade of sober colour ; and below 
 Woolwich it settles to a harsh green. As the music 
 and the colour change, so does the life of its banks ; 
 and the river lends grace to this life, and the life 
 embellishes the river. 
 
 The bridges alone, seen from river level, are 
 a revelation to those who have seen them only 
 from the embankments. A stately volume might 
 be made on the Bridges of London — past and 
 present — which interrupt the curves of this section 
 — Chelsea, Battersea, Albert, Lambeth, Vauxhall,
 
 216 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Westminster, Waterloo, Blackfriars, Southwark, Lon- 
 don Bridge (a separate volume for this) and Tower 
 Bridge. So waywardly does the river turn and 
 turn upon itself, that you come upon each as upon 
 some suddenly unveiled monument. 
 
 The very names of the riverside points are an 
 invitation to travel — Cherry Garden Pier, Cuckolds' 
 Point, Execution Dock, Traitor's Gate, George's 
 Stairs, Wapping Old Stairs, Horseferry Stairs, Laven- 
 der Lock, Pageant Stairs, Horselydown Stairs. How 
 delicately they trip from the tongue ! These names, 
 though, belong to the Thames below Old Swan Pier. 
 The solid prosperity of the stretch above that has 
 obliterated the apt and clinging nomenclature of 
 past times, except at Bankside, which name holds 
 much of fragrant association — Shakespeare, Greene, 
 Dekker, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, Nash, 
 and, much later, Johnson as auctioneer. 
 
 Between here and Lambeth one may say, roughly, 
 that there is nothing doing. The floating fire- 
 station, the training ship, the Thames Police-station 
 — these are fixtures as undelightful as the Embank- 
 ment hotels. Yet the two poems most closely 
 associated in the common mind with London's 
 river have their setting here — I mean " The Bridge 
 of Sighs " and " London from Westminster Bridge." 
 But neither of these, nor one of all the river poems 
 — and how many they are — has captured and re- 
 solved its inner mystery. For the most part it is
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 21T 
 
 employed as a mere framework for the human drama ; 
 and the poets, sheep-like, have followed one another 
 in finding their inspiration on the bridges and the 
 Victoria Embankment. 
 
 Down-stream there is always something doing. 
 The noise of day may somewhat abate by night, 
 but work proceeds. There is a heartiness that goes 
 with full swing here. The workers of this section 
 show a lively and sanguine disposition against the 
 lethargic attitudes of those whose business lies 
 up-stream. 
 
 There must be some subtle power, I think, work- 
 ing in the waters to effect this change. If ever you 
 do secure a barge-trip, observe your host and his 
 mate, as you set out from Wapping. Worrying their 
 way through the heat and stress of the traffic of 
 the Pool, they will be cheery of heart, with coun- 
 tenances of high June. By the time the barge is 
 passing the Victoria Embankment, their eyes hold 
 the hues of mid-winter and the cheer has fled from 
 their hearts. Maybe it's the loneliness of this upper 
 reach, maybe the unkind faces of the Embankment 
 buildings, the lackadaisical and voiceless work- 
 yards, the primness of Millbank, the sterile air that 
 oppress them. Anyway, the change is wrought, 
 and your Jolly Young Watermen become Disgnmtled 
 Old Taxi-men, and growl out weak curses in place 
 of honest invective. 
 
 Not that the bargees are any sort of masters of
 
 218 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 this art. Although the Pool is popularly regarded 
 as the nursery of Language, where fine young oaths 
 are born and bred up to be hardy maledictions, 
 familiar and hot in the mouth as ginger and house- 
 hold words, it can produce nothing in support of 
 that fiction. Billingsgate and Wapping live too 
 much, like other East End colonies, on tradition. 
 Doubtless the first winner of Doggett's Coat and 
 Badge was a fellow of fine and florid imprecation ; 
 but to-day the language of offence and protest lacks 
 variety and pungency. It is no more than a flourish 
 or intensive, a syncopation of an otherwise costive 
 phrase, signifying nothing. The three British adjec- 
 tives and the four foul nouns are so wearisomely 
 rung upon in casual conversation, that, in moments 
 of stress, when a suffering bargee must hold raging 
 and blistering language, or burst — he usually bursts. 
 
 The East End and the river are not what they 
 were — if they ever were. I proved this the other 
 day by a tour in search of our old friend, the tough. 
 I could not find him. Hoxton and Bermondsey 
 are played out ; or so it seems. I went to old-time 
 theatres of war, and made myself a deliberate pro- 
 vocation. I assumed attitudes of challenge, I 
 wore a ludicrous soft hat, pince-nez, brown spats, 
 and my usual lamb-like look. And nothing happened. 
 
 I went to Spitalfields, Stepney, Bethnal Green, 
 Hoxton, Haggerston, St. Luke's and Bermondsey. 
 In the four-ale bar of a little public-house in Spital-
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 219 
 
 fields, near Duval Street, I intentionally drank the 
 beer of a young gentleman of seafaring appearance ; 
 and he accepted my apology. Accepted my apology ! 
 In Brick Lane I publicly contradicted a youth who 
 was arguing about Billy Wells. Instead of punch- 
 ing me on the nose for my impudence, he mildly 
 said that he had a right to his opinion same as what 
 other people had. 
 
 What can things be coming to ? One would 
 have thought that the turmoil of the last five years 
 would have left the young men of these quarters 
 more pugnacious, more truculent, more ready for 
 Mohawking than before. But no ; all is quiet. 
 
 Where are the songs of Spring Onions (that master 
 ballad-monger, now deceased) and the blows of 
 yester-year ? Where are the boys of the old brigade? 
 Where all the rich vagabondage, the slap-bang 
 nights of cakes and ale ? Standardized, I fear, out 
 of existence. The horrid levelling process that is 
 everywhere in operation is toning down high colour 
 and rounding the emphatic angles of character. 
 High spirits are frowned upon by the best young 
 men of these parts. Instead, they turn themselves 
 to the study of the form of Improbables for the 
 next big race, and of methods of peaceful pene- 
 tration. If you want to lose your gold watch, it 
 is waste of time to hang about Long Lane or Little 
 Montague Street or Bell Yard ; you will get a 
 quicker result in Shaftesbury Avenue or Haymarket.
 
 220 THE OUTER CIRCLE 
 
 Fifteen years ago the costermonger passed away, 
 and was succeeded by Bill the Basher. Now he, 
 too, is passing. The lads of Bethnal Green and 
 Hoxton stand about at street corners in groups 
 more orderly than most vestry meetings. They 
 display no sock-and-bottle activity. They have 
 exchanged their cauliflower ears for high-brows. 
 They no longer change hats. They no longer bash. 
 They leave that to medical students. 
 
 I called at the Shoreditch Empire, at whose second 
 house, in the old days, the first two turns were sure 
 of receiving a lusty and full-throated " bird," with 
 raspberries obbligato. Believe me, the house was as 
 orderly as a repertory theatre ; and any turn that 
 failed to please received no message from the audience 
 save a bored silence. 
 
 In the public places of Haggerston and the Borough 
 decorum and gentility prevailed. What a change 
 from a few years back, when a famous boxer was in 
 his hey-day. Then, public places were settings for 
 high adventure, and the barmen kept fearful eyes 
 on the door for the entrance of the Pedlar in full 
 war-paint, which meant trouble pressed down and 
 running over. But he, too, and those of his 
 kidney, have been smothered by that blanket of 
 propriety which step-motherly hands have put 
 across us. 
 
 No doubt the present demeanour of the East End 
 youth is an improvement on that of the last genera-
 
 BARKING TO CYPRUS 221 
 
 tion. No doubt it marks a stage of progress. And 
 yet . . . and yet. . . . 
 
 Thinking thus, I came to Woolwich Ferry. This 
 grampus of a ferry is the dehght of the local children 
 on Saturdays and holidays, A good day on the 
 river may be had without expense by crossing and 
 re-crossing on these vessels, and the tedium of the 
 voyage may be relieved by games of " touch " round 
 the engine-house, or slides down the rails of the 
 gangway. My journey occupied four minutes, two 
 of which were occupied by a ceremonious casting 
 oft and bringing-to. Then I was on solid ground 
 again, and took train from the Arsenal Station to 
 Charing Cross, and so home.
 
 i 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED 
 
 WOKING AND LONDON
 
 OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS BURKE 
 
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 A delightful book, which Dickens might have written. 
 
 Tatler : 
 
 Scarcely a paragraph which does not hold some extraordinary bit of 
 description — a word-picture painted by a writer of genius. 
 
 Morning Post : 
 
 Our greatest living authority on the urban vagabond, and the master of a 
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 Mr. Burke gets nearer translating the untranslatable than any who have 
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 Thomas Burke is really a good author to meet. A racy, interesting 
 guide. 
 
 Dally Telegraph: 
 
 An extremely interesting volume. There are few noteworthy phases of 
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 Sunday Times : 
 
 An adventurer, a close observer, a humorist, and a man of real under- 
 standing. . . . Passages of real prose poetry. 
 
 Westminster Gazette : 
 
 No question about the cleverness of these impressions ... an achieve- 
 ment worthy of Foe. 
 
 Dally News : 
 
 Thomas Burke is an artist. His flashlight pictures are packed with 
 London's beauty and mystery. 
 
 Bookman : 
 
 A poet's London ... a precious treasure. It is long since I have read a 
 hook that has so thrilled and stirred me. 
 
 Dally Express : 
 
 One of the most human books about London overwritten. Every chapter 
 is alive, and some of them will bear reading a dozen times. His knowledge of 
 London is amazing. 
 
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 He has " cornered " London.
 
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 OF LIMEHOUSE 
 
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 Tlie Times: 
 
 A writer who knows and can give witli real artistry the truth 
 of Limehouse . . . these pieces of " Song " present the personaHty 
 of Chinatown with a reality that grows more and more vivid as one 
 reads them through. 
 
 Evening Standard : 
 
 What Thomas Burke does not know about Chinatown is not 
 really worth knowing ; so it may be taken that Quong Lee's satiric 
 songs fairly represent the outlook of the educated Chinaman. . . . 
 Power and pathos are curiously blended. 
 
 Morning Post: 
 
 Mr. Burke is a prose-writer of genius, who now introduces us 
 to a Chinese philosopher. . . . These little poems charm us so 
 quietly that we accede to Quong Lee's request to consider them as 
 " little cups of suey sen." 
 
 Aberdeen Journal: 
 
 Humour and a covert cynicism are found through all the poems, 
 and there is a fragrant beauty of imagery which captivates. 
 
 Glasgow Herald: 
 
 The humourous verses are very telling, their polite detachment 
 and frank materialism veiling their satire with an air of unconscious- 
 ness which makes them doubly effective, ... By the time we are 
 finished we arc more than friendly with Quong Lee. 
 
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 Quong Lee has a very distinct personality, and it is at once 
 pleasant and pathetic to find his arch, dehcate wisdom flowering in 
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 enlarging our knowledge of London. 
 
 Yorkshire Observer 
 
 In Quong Lee Mr. Burke has realised a character lovable alike 
 for its humour and its humanity. 
 
 Sastern Morning News: 
 
 Remarkable for observation and appreciation of the character of 
 the Chinaman in London.
 
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