Coming from a country where, even in the poorest workman's house, the bathroom at all events is always in commission, I was greatly struck by this incident; more especially when, an hour later, I heard the chambermaid cry out over the banisters:
'Mibel! The genelmun as orduder bawth sez 'e'll 'ave a chop wiv 'is tea!'
III
It was at the beginning of the second day at the Blue Boar that I counted over my money, and was rather startled to discover that expenditure in pennies can mount up quite rapidly.
In those days pennies were comparatively infrequent, almost negligible, in Australia; the threepenny-bit representing for most purposes the lowest price asked for anything. (It still is a coin more generally used in Australia than anywhere else, I think.) Now, during my first day or so in London I was so struck by the number of things one could do and get for a penny, that it seemed I was really spending hardly anything. I covered enormous distances on the tops of omnibuses, and talked a great deal with their purple-faced drivers, most of whom wore tall hats, and carried nosegays in their coats. When beggars and crossing-sweepers asked, I gave, unhesitatingly, in the Australian fashion, as one gives matches when asked for them. I gave only pennies; and now was startled to find what a comparatively large sum can be disbursed in a day or so, in single pennies, upon 'bus fares, newspapers, charity, and the like.
The two men to whom my only letters of introduction were addressed were both out of town: one in Algiers, the other, I gathered, on the Riviera. I suppose most people in London have never reflected on the oddity of the position of that person in their midst who does not know one solitary soul in the entire vast city. And yet, there must always be hundreds in that position. There was a time when I had serious thoughts of asking a policeman to recommend to me the cheapest quarter in which one might obtain a lodging, for I had already conceived a great admiration for the uniformed wardens of London's streets.
I studied the newspaper advertisements under the heading 'Apartments.' But some instinct told me these did not refer to London's cheapest lodgings, and I felt a most urgent need for economy in the handling of my small hoard. These few pounds must support me, I thought, until I could cut out a niche for myself, here where there seemed hardly room for the feet of the existing inhabitants. Already in quite a vague way I had become conscious of the shadow of that dread presence whose existence colours the outlook of millions in England. I wonder if the consciousness had begun to affect my expression!
My choice of a locality was made eventually upon ridiculously inadequate grounds. In a newspaper article dealing with charitable work, I came upon some such words as these: 'Life is supported upon an astoundingly small outlay of money among the poor householders, and even poorer lodgers, in these streets opening out of the Seven Sisters Road in the district lying between Stoke Newington and South Tottenham. Here are families whose weekly rental is far less than many a man spends on his solitary dinner in club or restaurant,' etc.
'This appears to be the sort of place for me,' I told myself. Remembering certain green omnibuses that bore the name of Stoke Newington, I descended from one of them an hour later outside a hostelry called the Weavers' Arms. (Transatlantic slang has dubbed these places 'gin-mills'; a telling name, I think.)
One of my difficulties was that I had no clear idea what amount would be considered cheap in London, by way of rent for a single room. The one thing clear in my mind was that I must, if possible, find the cheapest. I had already gathered from chance talk, on board the Orimba and elsewhere, that the Australian 'board and lodging' system was not much used in London, save in strata which would be above my means. The cheaper way, I gathered, was to pay so much for a room and 'attendance,' which should include the preparation of one's own food. The cheapest method of all, I had heard, and the method I meant to adopt, was to rent a furnished room, but without 'attendance,' and to provide meals for myself in the room or outside.