[CHAPTER VIII.]
A SYMPOSIUM IN A COMMON LODGING-HOUSE.
I.
My friend and I have the rights of friendship in a lodging-house which we frequently visit. The inmates of lodging-houses are often very dull on Sundays. They cannot walk the streets, full of well-dressed people. No one can have any idea who has not tried, how they welcome a friendly visit, appreciate the gift of some magazines, and how often one or another is in want of food, or even a few pence short of a bed. Few beg on Sunday except from sheer necessity. This particular lodging-house therefore, we tried to visit every Sunday, to sing for or with them, and talk—not preach—to them. It was the "married and single quarters," which consisted of two long low rooms in an old building in very bad repair. I do not know whether it has anything to do with our frequent visits, but the place is a great deal cleaner and tidier than when first we went. It has been painted and whitewashed, and the floor seems to be kept cleaner. But this leaves much to be desired! The women's sitting-room upstairs (which always contains as many men as women) is a room with a coke fire, the fumes from which are often almost overpowering. A bench round the room, and tables covered with metal for protection constitute the only furniture. The claim to be a "sitting-room" consists in the fact that no cooking is done there, but plenty of eating. There is but one gas-jet, and you can hardly see in the farthest corners. A stair out of the room leads upstairs, where, I am assured there are "good clean beds," a room for single women, and cubicles for married folk, who pay 6d., and 1d. for each child who sleeps with them, the unmarried paying 4d.
Poor as it is, this room contains "the aristocracy," for though both rooms appear to be free to all, you find above the regular residents who are residing some time, though some of these even have a preference for the democracy. Yet one can hardly understand why, for the room below must be uncomfortable in the extreme. It is, to begin with, a half cellar room approached by a stair, but leading out into the yard which contains the sanitary arrangements. The roof is in such bad repair that the laths of the ceiling are giving way, and water often drips from an imperfect pipe. The position of the doors ensures a through draught when they are opened, which is constantly happening. A dark entry with no door gives access to a room containing the lavatory accommodation—a set of wash-basins, above each of which is inscribed the motto, "Be just." This room, which is quite open to everyone, is the sole lavatory accommodation for both men and women. In the centre of the room is a huge stove, the heat from which is terrific, and makes this part of the room near the solitary gas-jet almost unbearable. Yet these two rooms accommodate about sixty inmates, and I am assured that the cooking arrangements are so deficient that they cannot get their food except in turns, and dinner is often delayed till very late in the afternoon for this reason. The place is, however, always full, for it is the cheapest place in town, and the beds, I am told, are far better than many others where the sitting room and lavatory accommodation is superior. There are clean sheets once a week! A woman can keep herself respectable, as the deputy and his wife endeavour to exclude prostitutes.
In these rooms are gathered every Sunday a motley assembly of men, women, and usually a few children. The inmates change, but there are always enough of the old to carry on the tradition of friendship, and some few are permanent. There is a living to be had in a lodging-house for a woman who can repair clothes, or earn a little by cleaning the rooms, or do a little washing.
To this lodging-house I took one Sunday night a letter "On Tramps, by a Tramp," which appeared in The Daily News, and reads as follows:—
"Sir,—I am a tramp, a man without a habitat. No outcry uprose in winter while the East End sheltered the tramp. When he trudges west after waste food and a grassy couch, the press rises up in arms. Each one of these 'bundles of rags' on the grass has a history, some an interesting one. I have been despoiled of the fruitage of my labours; have acted the role of errand lad, shop assistant, clerk, traveller, market-man, barber, canvasser, entertainer, mummer, song-writer, and playwright. I have dwelt within workhouse, asylum, and prison-walls; have scrubbed the filthy, tonsured the imbecile, tended the aged, soothed the dying. A pedlar of toys, many a time I have enjoyed a night on a turfy bed, the stars my coverlet, the hedge fruit my morning meal, my bath the shallow stream. Nature suns the nomad as well as the traveller. Derelicts, wastrels, paupers, pests, vagrants, bundles of rags! dub us what men will, we are human. There are tramps and loafing tramps; ill-clad and well-tailored loafers. Make all work, west and east. Loafing is infectious.