Near by was the old "Royal Sovereign," which had a skittle-alley. There would gather the lousy Lascars, and there they would roll, bowl or pitch. Then they would swill. Later, they would roll, bowl or pitch, with a skinful of gin, through the reeling streets to whichever boat might claim them.
The black Lascars, unlike their yellow mates, are mostly disagreeable people. There was, in those days, but one of them who even approached affability. He was something of a Limehouse Wonder, for, in a sudden fight over spilt beer, he showed amazing aptitude not only with his fists, but also in ringcraft. Chuck Lightfoot, a local sport, happened to see him, and took him in hand, and for some years he stayed in Shadwell, putting one after another of the local lads to sleep. He finished his ring career in a dockside saloon by knocking out an offending white man who had chipped him about his colour. It was a foul blow, and the man died. Pennyfields Polly got twelve months, and when he came out he started on the poppy and the snow, for he was not allowed to fight again, and life held nothing else for him. His friends tried to dissuade him, on the ground that he was ruining his health—a sensible argument to put to a man who had no interest in life; they might as well have told an Arctic explorer, who had lost the trail, that his tie was creeping up the back of his neck.
It is curious how the boys cling to you after a brief interchange of hospitalities. You drop into a beer-shack one evening, and you are sure to find a friend. One makes so easily in these parts a connection, salutations, fugitive intimacy. You are suddenly saluted, it may be by that good old friend, Mr. Lo, the poor Indian, or John Sam Ling Lee. Vaguely you recall the name. Yes; you stood him a drink, some ten years ago. Where has he been? Oh, he found a boat ... went round the Horn ... stranded at Lima ... been in Cuba some time ... got to Swatow later ... might stay in London ... might get a boat on Saturday.
But these casual encounters are now hardly to be had. So many boys, so many places have disappeared. Blue Gate Fields, scene of many an Asiatic demonism, is gone. The "Royal Sovereign"—the old "Royal Sovereign"—is gone, and the Home for Asiatics reigns in its stead. The hop-shacks about the Poplar arches and the closed courtyards and their one-story cottages are no more. To-day—as I have said three times already; stop me if I say it again—the glamorous shame of Chinatown has departed. Nothing remains save tradition, which now and then is fanned into life by such a case as that of the drugged actress. Yet you may still find people who journey fearfully to Limehouse, and spend money in its shops and restaurants, and suffer their self-manufactured excitements while sojourning in its somnolent streets among the respectable sons of Canton. The boys will not thank me for robbing them of the soft marks who pay twenty shillings for a jade bangle, of the kind sold in a sixpenny-halfpenny bazaar; so, anticipating their celestial disapproval, this miserable prostrates himself and remains bowed for their gracious pardon, and begs to be permitted to say that the entirely inadequate benedictions of this one will be upon them until the waning of the last moon.
SOHO CARRIES ON
Soho! Soho!
Joyous syllables, in early times expressive of the delights of the chase, and even to-day carrying an echo of nights of festivity, though an echo only. How many thousand of provincials, seeing London, have been drawn to those odourous byways that thrust themselves so briskly through the staid pleasure-land of the West End—Greek Street, Frith Street, Dean Street, Old Compton Street: a series of interjections breaking a dull paragraph—where they might catch the true Latin temper and bear away to the smoking-rooms of country Conservative clubs fulsome tales that have made Soho already a legend. Indeed, I know one cautious lad from Yorkshire, whose creed is that You Never Know and You Can't Be Too Careful, who always furnishes himself with a loaded revolver when dining with a town friend in Soho. I am not one to look sourly upon the simple pleasures of the poor; I do not begrudge him his concocted dish of thrills. I only mention this trick of his because it proves again the strange resurrective powers of an oft-buried lie. You may sweep, you may garnish Soho if you will; but the scent of adventure will hang round it still.
But to-day the scent is very faint. The streets that once rang with laughter and prodigal talk are in A.D. 1917 charged with gloom; their gentle noise is pitched in the minor key. These morsels of the South, shovelled into the swart melancholies of central London, have lost their happy summer tone. Charing Cross Road was always a streak of misery, but, on the most leaden day, its side streets gave an impression of light. Lord knows whence came the light. Not from the skies. Perhaps from the indolently vivacious loungers; perhaps from the flower-boxes on the window-sills, or the variegated shops bowered with pendant polonies, in rainbow wrappings of tinfoil, and flasks of Chianti. One always walked down Old Compton Street with a lilt, as to some carnival tune. Nothing mattered. There were macaroni and spaghetti to eat, and Chianti to drink; dishes of ravioli; cigars at a halfpenny a time and cigarettes at six a penny; copies of frivolous comic-papers; and delicate glasses of lire, a liqueur that carried you at the first sip to the green-hued Mediterranean. The very smell of the place was the smell of those lovable little towns of the Midi.