Behind the window I look down into at right angles from the studio, the Scientist in white apron, surrounded by bottles and retorts and microscopes, industriously examines germs from morning till midnight, oblivious to everything outside, which for too long meant, among other things, showers of soft white ashes and evil greasy smoke and noxious odours sent by the germs up through his chimneys into our studio; nor could the polite representations of our Agent that he was a public nuisance rouse him from his indifference, since he knew that the smoke was not black enough to make him one technically. It was only when J. protested, with an American energy effective in England, that the germs ceased to trouble us and I could bear unmoved the sight of the white-aproned Scientist behind his window.
In the new house with the flat roof the Inventor has his office, and I am sure it is the great man himself I so often see walking gravely up and down among the chimney-pots, evolving and planning new wireless wonders; and I am as sure that the solemn St. Bernard who walks there too is his, and, in some way it is not for me to explain, part of the mysterious machinery connecting the Quarter with the rest of the world.
Plainly visible in more rooms than one, bending over high drawing-tables not only through the day but on into the night, are many Architects, with whom the Quarter has ever been in favour since the masters who designed it years ago made their headquarters in our street, until yesterday, when the young man who is building the Town Hall for the County Council moved into it, though, had the County Council had its way, there would be no Quarter now for an Architect to have his office in. Architectural distinction, or picturesqueness, awakes in the London official such a desire to be rid of it that, but for the turning of the worm who pays the rates, our old streets and Adam houses would have been pulled down to make place for the brand-new municipal building which, as it is, has been banished out of harm's way to the other side of the river.
Busier still than the Architects are the old men who live in the two ancient houses opposite mine, where the yellow brick just shows here and there through the centuries' grime, and where windows as grimy—though a clause in the leases of the Quarter demands that windows should be washed at least once a month—open upon little ironwork balconies and are draped with draggled lace-curtains, originally white but now black. I have no idea who the old men are, or what is the task that absorbs them. They look as ancient as the houses and so alike that I could not believe there were three of them if, every time I go to my dining-room window, I did not see them all three in their chambers, two on the third floor, to the left and right of me, one on the floor below about halfway between,—making, J. says, an amusing kind of pattern. Each lives alone, each has a little table drawn up to his window, and there they sit all day long, one on an easy leather chair, one on a stiff cane-bottomed chair, one on a hard wooden stool,—that is the only difference. There they are perpetually sorting and sifting papers from which nothing tears them away; there they have their midday chop and tankard of bitter served to them as they work, and there they snatch a few hasty minutes afterwards to read the day's news. They never go out unless it is furtively, after dark, and I have never failed to find them at their post except occasionally on Sunday morning, when the chairs by the tables are filled by their clothes instead of themselves, because, I fancy, the London housekeeper, who leaves her bed reluctantly every day in the week but who on that morning is not to be routed out of it at all, refuses to wake them or to bring them their breakfast. They may be solicitors, but I do not think so; they may be literary men, but I do not think that either; and, really, I should just as lief not be told who and what they are, so much more in keeping is mystery with the grimy old houses where their old days are spent in endless toiling over endless tasks.
If the three old men are not authors, plenty of my other neighbours are, as they should be out of compliment to Bacon and Pepys, to Garrick and Topham Beauclerk, to Dr. Johnson and Boswell, to Rousseau and David Copperfield, and to any number besides who, in their different days, belonged to or haunted the Quarter and made it a world of memories for all who came after. I have authors on every side of me: not Chattertons undiscovered in their garrets, but celebrities wallowing in success, some of whom might be the better for neglect. Many a young enthusiast comes begging for the privilege of gazing from my windows into theirs. I have been assured that the walls of the Quarter will not hold the memorial tablets which we of the present generation are preparing for their decoration. The "best sellers" are issued, and the Repertory Theatre nourished, from our midst.
The clean-shaven man of legal aspect who arrives at his office over the way as regularly as the clock strikes ten, who leaves it as regularly at one for his lunch, and as regularly in the late afternoon closes up for the day, is the Novelist whose novels are on every bookstall and whose greatness is measured by the thousands and hundreds of thousands into which they run. He does not do us the honour of living in the Quarter, but comes to it simply in office hours, and is as scrupulously punctual as if his business were with briefs rather than with dainty trifles lighter than the lightest froth. No clerk could be more exact in his habits. Anthony Trollope was not more methodical. This admirable precision might cost him the illusions of his admirers, but to me it is invaluable. For when the wind is in the wrong direction and I cannot hear Big Ben, or the fog falls and I cannot see St. Martin's spire, I have only to watch for him to know the hour, and in a household where no two clocks or watches agree as to time, the convenience is not to be exaggerated.
My neighbour from the house on the river-front, next to Peter the Great's, who often drops in for a talk and whom Augustine announces as le Monsieur du Quartier, is the American Dramatist, author of the play that was the most popular of the season last year in New York. I should explain, perhaps, that Augustine has her own names for my friends, and that usually her announcements require interpretation. For instance, few people would recognize my distinguished countryman, the Painter, in le Monsieur de la Dame qui ne monte jamais les escaliers, or the delightful Lady Novelist in la Demoiselle aux chats, or—it is wiser not to say whom in le Monsieur qui se gobe. But I have come to understand even her fine shades, and when she announces les Gens du Quartier, then I know it is not the American Dramatist, but the British Publicist and his wife who live in Garrick's house, and who add to their distinction by dining in the room where Garrick died.
The red curtains a little further down the street belong to the enterprising Pole, who, from his chambers in the Quarter, edits the Polish Punch, a feat which I cannot help thinking, though I have never seen the paper, must be the most comic thing about it. In the house on one side, the author who is England's most distinguished Man of Letters to-day, and who has become great as a novelist, began life as an architect. From the house on the other side, the Poet-Patriot-Novelist of the Empire fired, or tried to fire, the Little Englanders with his own blustering, knock-you-down Imperialism, and bullied and flattered them, amused and abused them, called them names they would not have forgiven from any other man living and could not easily swallow from him, and was all the while himself so simple and unassuming that next to nobody knew he was in the Quarter until he left it. The British Dramatist close by, who conquers the heart of the sentimental British public by sentiment, is just as unassuming. He is rarely without a play on the London stage, rarely without several on tour. He could probably buy out everybody in the Quarter, except perhaps the Socialist, and he can lose a little matter of sixteen thousand pounds or so and never miss it. But so seldom is he seen that you might think he was afraid to show himself. "You'd never know 'e was in the 'ouse, 'e's that quiet like. Why, 'e never gives no trouble to nobody," the Housekeeper has confided to me. He shrinks from putting his name on his front door, though by this time he must be used to its staring at him in huge letters from posters and playbills all over the world. Perhaps it is to give himself courage that he keeps a dog who is as forward as his master is retiring, and who is my terror. I am on speaking terms with most of the dogs of the Quarter, but with the Dramatist's I have never ventured to exchange a greeting. I happened to mention my instinctive distrust, one day, to a friend who has made the dog's personal acquaintance.
"He eats kids!" was my friend's comment. Then he added: "You have seen dozens of children go up to the Dramatist's room, haven't you?"
"Yes," I answered, for it was a fact.