Each successive phase is limned indelibly—that’s the sort of literary style I’ve got, if wanted—on the tablets of my memory.
I’d been up West, and who should I run across in Oxford Street but my old friend, Charlie Cookson. Very good company is Charlie Cookson. See him at a shilling hop at the Holborn: he’s pretty much all there all the time. Well-known follower—of course, purely as an amateur—of the late Dan Leno, king of comedians; good penetrating voice; writes his own in-between bits—you know what I mean: the funny observations on mothers-in-law, motors, and marriage, marked “Spoken” in the song-books. Fellows often tell him he’d make a mint of money in the halls, and there’s a rumour flying round among us who knew him in the “Moon” that he was seen coming out of a Bedford Street Variety Agency the other day.
Well, I met Charlie at something after ten. Directly he spotted me he was at his antics, standing stock still on the pavement in a crouching attitude, and grasping his umbrella like a tomahawk. His humour’s always high-class, but he’s the sort of fellow who doesn’t care a blow what he does. Chronic in that respect, absolutely. The passers-by couldn’t think what he was up to. “Whoop-whoop-whoop!” that’s what he said. He did, straight. Only yelled it. I thought it was going a bit too far in a public place. So, to show him, I just said “Good evening, Cookson; how are you this evening?” With all his entertaining ways he’s sometimes slow at taking a hint. No tact, if you see what I mean.
In this case, for instance, he answered at the top of his voice: “Bolly Golly, yah!” and pretended to scalp me with his umbrella. I immediately ducked, and somehow knocked my bowler against his elbow. He caught it as it was falling off my head. Then he said, “Indian brave give little pale face chief his hat.” This was really too much, and I felt relieved when a policeman told us to move on. Charlie said: “Come and have two penn’orth of something.”
Well, we stayed chatting over our drinks (in fact, I was well into my second lemon and dash) at the Stockwood Hotel until nearly eleven. At five to, Charlie said good-bye, because he was living in, and I walked out into the Charing Cross Road, meaning to turn down Shaftesbury Avenue so as to get a breath of fresh air. Outside the Oxford there was a bit of a crowd. I asked a man standing outside a tobacconist’s what the trouble was. “Says he won’t go away without kissing the girl that sang ‘Empire Boys,’” was the reply. “Bin shiftin’ it, ’e ’as, not ’arf!” Sure enough, from the midst of the crowd came:
Yew are ther boys of the Empire,
Steady an’ brave an’ trew.
Yew are the wuns
She calls ’er sons
An’ I luv yew.
I had gone, out of curiosity, to the outskirts of the crowd, and before I knew what had happened I found myself close to the centre of it. A large man in dirty corduroys stood with his back to me. His shape seemed strangely familiar. Still singing, and swaying to horrible angles all over the shop, he slowly pivoted round. In a moment I recognised the bleary features of Tom Blake. At the same time he recognised me. He stretched out a long arm and seized me by the shoulder. “Oh,” he sobbed, “I thought I ’ad no friend in the wide world except ’er; but now I’ve got yew it’s orlright. Yus, yus, it’s orlright.” A murmur, almost a cheer it was, circulated among the crowd. But a policeman stepped up to me.
“Now then,” said the policeman, “wot’s all this about?”
Yew are the wuns
She calls ’er sons—
shouted Blake.