Europe Revised

by Irvin S. Cobb

According to all the printed information on the subject the London coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah. The costers I saw were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly these gentlemen habitues of the Cave of the Innocents wore few or no velvet pants, and guzzled little or none of the absinthe. Their favorite tipple appeared to be beer; and their female companions snuggled closely beside them.

We stayed among them fully twenty minutes, but not a single person was stabbed while we were there. It must have been an off-night for stabbings.

Still, I judged them to have been genuine exhibits because here, for the first, last and only time in Paris, I found a shop where a stranger ready to spend a little money was not welcomed with vociferous enthusiasm. The paired-off cave-dwellers merely scowled on us as we scrouged past them to a vacant bench in a far corner. The waiter, though, bowed before us—a shockheaded personage in the ruins of a dress suit—at the same time saying words which I took to be complimentary until one of my friends explained that he had called us something that might be freely translated as a certain kind of female lobster. Circumscribed by our own inflexible and unyielding language we in America must content ourselves with calling a man a plain lobster; but the limber-tongued Gaul goes further than that—he calls you a female lobster, which seems somehow or other to make it more binding.

However, I do not really think the waiter meant to be deliberately offensive; for presently, having first served us with beer which for obvious reasons we did not drink, he stationed himself alongside the infirm piano and rendered a little ballad to the effect that all men were spiders and all women were snakes, and all the World was a green poison; so, right off, I knew what his trouble was, for I had seen many persons just as morbidly affected as himself down in the malaria belt of the United States, where everybody has liver for breakfast every morning. The waiter was bilious—that was what ailed him.

For the sake of the conventions I tried to feel apprehensive of grave peril. It was no use. I felt safe—not exactly comfortable, but perfectly safe. I could not even muster up a spasm of the spine when a member of our party leaned over and whispered in my ear that any one of these gentry roundabout us would cheerfully cut a man's throat for twenty-five cents. I was surprised, though, at the moderation of the cost; this was the only cheap thing I had struck in Paris. It was cheaper even than the same job is supposed to be in the district round Chatham Square, on the East Side of New York, where the credulous stranger so frequently is told that he can have a plain murder done for five dollars—or a fancy murder, with trimmings, for ten; rate card covering other jobs on application. In America, however, it has been my misfortune that I did not have the right amount handy; and here in Paris I was handicapped by my inability to make change correctly. By now I would not have trusted anyone in Paris to make change for me—not even an Apache. I was sorry for this, for at a quarter a head I should have been very glad to engage a troupe of Apaches to kill me about two dollars' worth of cabdrivers and waiters. For one of the waiters at our hotel I would have been willing to pay as much as fifty cents, provided they killed him very slowly. Because of the reasons named, however, I had to come away without making any deal, and I have always regretted it.

At the outset of the chapter immediately preceding this one I said the English had no night life. This was a slight but a pardonable misstatement of the actual facts. The Englishman has not so much night life as the Parisian, the Berliner, the Viennese or the Budapest; but he has more night life in his town of London than the Roman has in his town of Rome. In Rome night life for the foreigner consists of going indoors at eventide and until bedtime figuring up how much money he has been skinned out of during the course of the day just done—and for the native in going indoors and counting up how much money he has skinned the foreigner out of during the day aforesaid. London has its night life, but it ends early—in the very shank of the evening, so to speak.

This is due in a measure to the operation of the early-closing law, which, however, does not apply if you are a bona-fide traveler stopping at your own inn. There the ancient tavern law protects you. You may sit at ease and, if so minded, may drink and eat until daylight doth appear or doth not appear, as is generally the case in the foggy season. There is another law, of newer origin, to prohibit the taking of children under a certain age into a public house. On the passage of this act there at once sprang up a congenial and lucrative employment for those horrible old-women drunkards who are so distressingly numerous in the poorer quarters of the town. Regardless of the weather one of these bedrabbled creatures stations herself just outside the door of a pub. Along comes a mother with a thirst and a child. Surrendering her offspring to the temporary care of the hag the mother goes within and has her refreshment at the bar. When, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she comes forth to reclaim the youngster she gives the other woman a ha'penny for her trouble, and eventually the other woman harvests enough ha'penny bits to buy a dram of gin for herself. On a rainy day I have seen a draggled, Sairey-Gamp-looking female caring for as many as four damp infants under the drippy portico of an East End groggery.

It is to the cafes that the early-closing law chiefly applies. The cafes are due to close for business within half an hour after midnight. When the time for shutting up draws nigh the managers do not put their lingering patrons out physically. The individual's body is a sacred thing, personal liberty being most dear to an Englishman. It will be made most dear to you too—in the law courts—if you infringe on it by violence or otherwise. No; they have a gentler system than that, one that is free from noise, excitement and all mussy work. Along toward twelve-thirty o'clock the waiters begin going about, turning out the lights. The average London restaurant is none too brightly illuminated to start with, being a dim and dingy ill-kept place compared with the glary, shiny lobster palace that we know; so instantly you are made aware of a thickening of the prevalent gloom. The waiters start in at the far end of the room and turn out a few lights. Drawing nearer and nearer to you they turn out more lights; and finally, by way of strengthening the hint, they turn out the lights immediately above your head, which leaves you in the stilly dark with no means of seeing your food even; unless you have taken the precaution to spread phosphorus on your sandwich instead of mustard—which, however, is seldom done. A better method is to order a portion of one of the more luminous varieties of imported cheese.

The best thing of all, however, is to take your hat and stick and go away from there. And then, unless you belong to a regular club or carry a card of admission to one of the chartered all-night clubs that have sprung up so abundantly in London, and which are uniformly stuffy, stupid places where the members take their roistering seriously—or as a last resort, unless you care to sit for a tiresome hour or two in the grill of your hotel—you might as well be toddling away to bed; that is to say, you might as well go to bed unless you find the scenes in the street as worth while as I found them.

At this hour London's droning voice has abated to a deep, hoarse snore; London has become a great, broody giant taking rest that is troubled by snatches of wakefulness; London's grimy, lined face shows new wrinkles of shadow; and new and unexpected clumping of colors in monotone and halftone appear. From the massed-up bulk of things small detached bits stand vividly out: a flower girl whose flowers and whose girlhood are alike in the sere and yellow leaf; a soldier swaggering by, his red coat lighting up the grayish mass about him like a livecoal in an ashheap; a policeman escorting a drunk to quarters for the night—not, mind you, escorting him in a clanging, rushing patrol wagon, which would serve to attract public attention to the distressing state of the overcome one, but conveying him quietly, unostentatiously, surreptitiously almost, in a small-wheeled vehicle partaking somewhat of the nature of a baby carriage and somewhat of the nature of a pushcart.