Behind each of those tiny garret windows lurks life—life in its most elemental costume. There is no time, thought, or preparation for anything but the elemental passions, and songs of joy, hope, and laughter are written into each existence, even as the killings go on, surely, swiftly.
There must be a magic wand forever doing a pendulum swing over this land, for the point of view often changes from the beastly to the beautiful, and in one short moment the innocent frequently gather the sophistication of the aged. These creatures of life's game run blithely along their course ignorant of the past, joyful in the present, and careless of the future, while their tiny lightened windows seem to wink deliberately as they make pinpricks of light through the shuttered gloom.
On the other side of the street there is stepping a little lady whose cheap cotton clothes are cut with Parisian cunning, and as we cross and pass her we discern beauty, enhanced manyfold by youth and vitality, but hardened with premature knowledge. I can't help but think of little Gracie Goodnight, the little lady who resented the touch of a "Chink," so much so that she filled the fire extinguishers in his place with oil, and when he was trapped in the blazing building, calmly, and with a baby smile upon her face, poured the contents of the extinguisher over him and his furniture.
There is the Queen's Theatre, bringing forward a mental picture of little Gina of Chinatown, who stopped a panic in the fire-frightened audience of the playhouse as her début offering on the stage. Little Gina, who brought the whole neighbourhood to her feet in her joyous dancing delight. Little Gina, who at fourteen had lived, laughed, and loved, and who met death with a smile, carrying the secret of him with her.
Every once in a while Burke merely lifts his stick and points. His gesture needs no comment. He has located and made clear without language the only one object he could possibly mean, and, strangely, it is always something particularly interesting to me. He is most unusual.
What a guide he is! He is not showing me Main Street, not the obvious, not even the sightseer's landmarks, but in this rambling I am getting the heart, the soul, the feeling. I feel that he has gauged me quickly—that he knows I love feelings rather than details, that he is unconsciously flattering to my subtlety, after two miles through black, though lovely, shadows.
Now he is picking the spots where lights are shining from the fish shops. He knows their locations, knows their lights because he has studied them well. There are forms slinking gracefully, as though on location and with rehearsed movement. What an effect for a camera!
This is rugged. Here are the robust of the slums. People act more quickly here than in Lambeth. And suddenly we are back where we started. In a car we go to the old Britannia, Hoxton, rather reluctantly.
There is a glaring moving-picture palace. What a pity! I resent its obtrusion. We go along toward the East India Docks—to Shadwell. And I am feeling creepy with the horror of his stories of Shadwell. I could hear a child screaming behind a shuttered window and I wondered and imagined, but we did not stop anywhere.
We meandered along with just an occasional gesture from him, all that was necessary to make his point. To Stanhope Road, Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Ratcliffe, Soho, Notting Dale, and Camden Town.