"chinatown, my chinatown, where the lights are low"—a fragment of a music-hall song in praise of chinatown which sticks ironically in my memory. the fact that the lights are low applies at the time of writing to the whole of london; and as for the word "chinatown," which once carried a perfume of delight, it is now empty of meaning save as indicating a district of london where chinamen live. to-day limehouse is without salt or savour; flat and unprofitable; and of all that it once held of colour and mystery and the macabre, one must write in the past tense. the missionaries and the defence of the realm act have together stripped it of all that furtive adventure that formerly held such lure for the westerner.
it was in 1917 that i returned to it, after an absence of some years. in that year i received an invitation that is rightly accepted as a compliment: i was asked by alvin langdon coburn to meet him at his studio, and let him make from[pg 41] my face one of those ecstatic muddles of grey and brown that have won for him the world's acknowledgment as the first artist of the camera. our meeting discovered a mutual enthusiasm for limehouse, and we arranged an excursion. there, we said to ourselves, we shall find yet a taste of the pleasant things that the world has forgotten: soft movement, solitude, little courtesies, as well as wonderful things to buy. there we shall find sharp-flavoured things to eat and drink, and josses and chaste carvings, and sharp knives. oh, and the tea, too—the little two-ounce packets of suey-sen at sevenpence, that clothe the hour of five o'clock with delicate scents and dreams.
but the suey-sen was gone, done to death by the tea-rationing order. gone, too, was the bland iniquity of the place. our saunter through pennyfields and the causeway was a succession of disillusions. the spirit of the commercial and controlled west breathed on us from every side. all the dusky delicacies were suppressed. dora had stepped in and khyboshed the little haunts that once invited to curious amusement. opium, li-un, and other essences of the white poppy, secretly hoarded, were fetching ￡30 per pound.[pg 42] the hop-hoads had got it in the neck, and the odour of gin-seng floated seldom upon the air. the old tong feuds had been suppressed by stern policing, and thames police court had become almost as suave and seemly as rumpelmayer's. even that joyous festival, the feast of the lanterns, kept at the chinese new year, had fallen out of the calendar. the asiatic seamen had been made good by an order in council. all for the best, no doubt; yet how one missed the bizarre flame and salt of the old quarter.
we found pennyfields and the causeway uncomfortably crowded, for the outward mail sailings were reduced, and the men who landed in the early days had been unable to get away. so the streets and lodging-houses were thronged with arabs, malays, hindoos, south sea islanders, and east africans; and the asiatics' home for destitute orientals was having the time of its life. every cubicle in the hotel was engaged, and many wanderers were sleeping where they could. those with money paid for their accommodation; for the others, a small grant from the india office secured them board and bed until such time as proper arrangements could be made. the kitchens were working overtime, for each[pg 43] race or creed has its own inexorable laws in the matter of food. some eat this and some eat that, and others will eat anything—save pork—provided that prayers are spoken over it by an appointed priest.
at half-past nine an occasional tipsy malay might be seen about the streets, but the old riots and mêlées were things of the past. in the little public-house at the corner of pennyfields we found the usual crowd of chinks and white girls, and the electric piano was gurgling its old sorry melodies, and beer and whisky were flowing; but the whole thing was very decorous and war-timish.
we did, however, find one splash of colour. a new and very gaudy restaurant had lately been opened in a narrow by-street, and here we took a meal of noodle, chow-chow and awabi, and some tea that was a mocking echo of the old suey-sen. the room was crowded with yellow boys and a few white girls. suddenly, from a corner table, occupied by two of the ladies, came a sharp stir. a few heated words rattled on the air, and then one rose, caught the other a resounding biff in the neck, and screamed at her:—
"you dare say i'm not respectable! i am respectable. i come from manchester."
[pg 44]
this evidence the assaulted one refused to regard as final. she rose, reached over the table, and clawed madly at her opponent's face and clothes. then they broke from the table, and fought, and fell, and screamed, and delivered the hideous animal noises made by those who see red. at once the place boiled. i've never been in a chinese rebellion, but if the clamour and the antics of the twenty or so yellow boys in that café be taken as a faint record of such an affair, it is a good thing for the sensitive to be out of. to the corner dashed waiters and some customers, and there they rolled one another to the floor in their efforts to separate the girls, while others stood about and screamed advice in the various dialects of the celestial empire. at last the girls were torn apart, and struggled insanely in half a dozen grips as they hurled inspired thoughts at one another, or returned to the old chorus of "dirty prostitute." "i ain't a prostitute. i come from manchester. lemme gettater."
and with a final wrench the respectable one did get at her. she broke away, turned to a table, and with three swift gestures flung cup, saucer and sauce-boat into the face of her [pg 45]traducer. that finished it. the proprietor had stood aloof while the girls tore each other's faces and bit at uncovered breasts. but the sight of his broken crockery acted as a remover of gravity. he dashed down the steps, pushed aside assistants and advisers, grabbed the nearest girl—the respectable one—round the waist, wrestled her to the top of the marble stairs that lead from the door to the upper restaurant, and then, with a sharp knee-kick, sent her headlong to the bottom, where she lay quiet.
whereupon her opponent crashed across a table in hysterics, kicking, moaning, laughing and sobbing: "you've killed 'er—yeh beast. you've killed 'er. she's my pal. oo. oo. oooooowh!"
this lasted about a minute. then, suddenly, she arose, pulled herself together, ran madly down the stairs, picked up her pal, and staggered with her to the street. at once, without a word of comment, the company returned placidly to its eating and drinking; and this affair—an event in the otherwise dull life of limehouse—was over.
years ago, such affairs were of daily occurrence, and the west india dock road became a legend to frighten children with at night. but[pg 46] the times change. chinatown is a back number, and there now remains no corner to which one may take the curious visitor thirsting for exotic excitement—unless it be the wilds of tottenham.
the chinatown of new york, too, has become respectable. the founder of that colony, old nick, died recently, in miserable circumstances, after having acquired thousands of dollars by his enterprise. from the high estate of founder of the chinatown he dropped to the position of panhandler, swinging on the ears of his compatriots. about forty years ago, when mott street, pell street, and doyers street were the territory of the whyos, the bowery boys and the dead rabbits, old nick crept stealthily into a small corner. he started a cigar-store in mott street, making his own cigars. he was honest, thrifty, and possessed a lust for work. the cigar-store prospered, and soon, feeling lonely, as the only chink among so many white boys, he passed the word to his countrymen about the big spenders of the district. on his advice, they closed their laundries and came to live alongside, to get their pickings from the dollars that were flying about. chinatown was started, and rapidly developed, and its atmosphere was sedulously "arranged"[pg 47] for the benefit of conducted tourists from uptown, and the tables rattled with the dice and fluttered with the cards. this success was the beginning of old nick's failure. at the tables he lost all: his capital, his store, his home, and his proud position. for a time he managed to survive in fair circumstances; but soon the hatchet men became too numerous, and their tong feuds too deadly, and their gambling tricks too notorious. police raids and the firm hand of the higher chinese merchants put a stop to the prosperity of chinatown, and soon it fell away to nothing, and old nick passed his last days on the sporadic charity of a white woman whom he had in happier days befriended.
and to-day pell street and mott street are as quiet and virtuous as pennyfields and the causeway. coburn and i left the old waterside streets with feelings of dismay, tasting ashes in the mouth. we tried to draw from an old storekeeper, a topside good-fella chap, some expression of his own attitude to present conditions, but with his usual impassivity he passed it over. how could this utterly debased and miserable one who dares to stand before noble and refined ones from office of printed leaves, who have honoured his[pg 48] totally inadequate establishment with symmetrical presences, presume to offer to exalted intelligences utterly insignificant thoughts that find lodging in despicable breast?
clearly he was handing us the lemon, so we took it, and departed for the more reckless joys of hammersmith, where coburn has his home. on the journey back i remembered the drabness we had just left, and then i remembered limehouse as it was—a pool of eastern filth and metropolitan squalor; a place where unhappy lascars, discharged from ships they were only too glad to leave, were at once the prey of rascally lodging-house keepers, mostly english, who fleeced them over the fan-tan tables and then slung them to the dark alleys of the docks. a wicked place; yes, but colourful.
listen to the following: two extracts from an east end paper of thirty years back:—
thames police court.
john lyons, who keeps a common lodging-house, which he has neglected to register, appeared before mr. ingram in answer to a summons taken out by inspector price. j. kirby, 53a, inspector of common lodging-houses, stated that on saturday night last he visited defendant's house, which was in a most filthy and dilapidated condition. in the first floor he found a chinaman sleeping in a cupboard or small closet, filled with cobwebs. the wretched creature was without a shirt, and[pg 49] was covered with a few rags. the chinaman was apparently in a dying state, and has since expired. an inquest was held on his remains, and it was proved he died of fever, and had been most grossly neglected. the room in which the chinaman lay was without bedding or furniture. in the second room he found aby callighan, an irishwoman, who said she paid 1s. 6d. a week rent. in the third room was abdallah, a lascar, who said he paid 3s. per week, and a chinaman squatting on a chair smoking. in the fourth room was dong yoke, a chinaman, who said he paid 2s. 6d. per week for the privilege of sleeping on the bare boards; two lascars on bedsteads smoking opium, and the dead body of a lascar lying on the floor, and covered with an old rug. in the fifth room was an asiatic seaman, named peru, who said he paid 3s. per week, and eleven other lascars, six of whom were sleeping on bedsteads, three on the floor, and two on chairs. if the house were registered, only four persons would be allowed in the room. the effluvium, caused by smoking opium and the over-crowded state of the room, was most nauseous and intolerable. in the kitchen, which was very damp, he found sedgoo, who said he had to pay 2s. a week, and eight chinamen huddled together. the stench here was very bad. if the house were registered, no one would have been allowed to inhabit the kitchen at all. he should say the house was quite unfit for a human habitation. the floors of the rooms, the stairs and passages were in a filthy and dilapidated condition, covered with slime, dirt, and all kinds of odious substances.
the men had been hung up with weights tied to their feet; flogged with a rope; pork, the horror of the mohammedan, served out to them to eat, and the insult carried further by violently ramming the tail of a pig into their mouths and twisting the entrails of the pig round their necks; they were forced up aloft at the point of the bayonet, and a shirt all gory with lascar blood was exhibited on the trial, and all this proved in evidence. one man leaped overboard to escape his tormentor; a boat was about to be lowered to save the drowning man, but it was prohibited, and he was left to perish. the captain escaped out of the country, forfeiting his bail and[pg 50] abandoning his ship, leaving his chief officer to be brought to trial and to undergo punishment for his share of this cruel transaction.
in those days you might stand in west india dock road, on a june evening, in a dusk of blue and silver, the air heavy with the reek of betel nut, chandu and fried fish; the cottages stewing themselves in their viscid heat. against the skyline rose limehouse church, one of the architectural beauties of london. yellow men and brown ambled about you, and a melancholy guitar tinkled a melody of lost years. then, were colour and movement; the whisper of slippered feet; the adventurous uncertainty of shadow; heavy mist, which never lifts from poplar and limehouse; strange voices creeping from nowhere; and occasionally the rasp of a gramophone delivering records of interminable chinese dramas. the soul of the orient wove its spell about you, until, into this evanescent atmosphere, came a salvation army chorus bawling a lot of emphatic stuff about glory and blood, or an organ with "it ain't all lavender!" and at once the clamour and reek of the place caught you.
thirty years ago—that was its time of roses. then, indeed, things did happen: things so strong that the perfume of them lingers to this day, and[pg 51] one can, remembering them, sometimes sympathize with those who say "limehouse" in tones of terror. one of my earliest memories is of the west india dock road on a wet november afternoon. a fight was on between a chink and a malay. the chink used a knife in an upward direction, forcefully. the malay got the chink down, and jumped with heavy boots on the bleeding yellow face.
some time ago, when my ways were cast in that district, the boys would loaf at a kind of semi-private music-hall, attached to a public-house, where one of the westernized chinks, a san sam phung, led the band, and freely admitted all friends who bought him drinks. every night he climbed to his chair, and his yellow face rose like a november sun over the orchestra-rail. when the conductor's tap turned on the flow of the dozen instruments, which blared rag-tag music, we shifted to the babbling bar and tried to be amused by the show. it was the dustiest thing in entertainment that you can imagine. to this day the hall stinks of snarling song. dusty jokes we had, dusty music, dusty dresses, dusty girls to wear them, or take them off; and only the flogging of cheap whisky to carry us through the evening.[pg 52] solemn smokes of cut plug and indifferent cigar swirled in a haze of lilac, and over the opiate air san's fiddle would wail, surging up to the balcony's rim and the cloud of corpse faces that swam above it. more and more mephitic the air would grow, and noisier would become voice and foot and glass; until, with a burst of lights, and the roar of the chord-off from the band, the end would come, and we would tumble out into the great road where were the winking river, and keen air and sanity.
later, the boys would shuffle along with san sam phung to his lodging over a waterside wine-shop, crossing the crazy bridge into the isle of dogs. often, passing at midnight, you might have heard his heart-song trickling from an open window. he cared only for the modern, italianate stuff, and would play it for hours at a time. seated in the orchestra, in his second-hand dress-suit and well-oiled hair, he looked about as picturesque as a bayswater boarding-house. but you should have seen him afterwards, during the day, in his one-room establishment, radiant in spangled dressing-gown and tempestuous hair, a cigarette at his lips, his fiddle at his chin. it was worth sitting up late for. then his face would shine,[pg 53] if ever a chink's can, and his bow would tear the soul from the fiddle in a fury of lyricism.
half his room was filled with a stove, which thrust a long neck of piping ten feet in the wrong direction, and then swerved impulsively to the window. in the corner was a joss. the rest of the room was littered with fiddles and music. over the stove hung a gaudy view of amoy. he never tired of talking of amoy, his home. he longed to get back to it—to flowers, blue waters, white towns. he lived only for the moment when he might tuck his fiddle-case under his arm and return to amoy, home and beauty. once started on the tawdry ribaldry which he had to play at the hall, his arm and fingers following mechanically the sheet before him, he would set his fancies free, and, like a flock of rose-winged birds, they took flight to amoy. music, for him, was just melody—the graceful surface of things; in a word amoy. often he confessed to a terrible fear that he would grow old and die among our swart streets ere he could save enough to return. and he did. full of the poppy one dark night, he stepped over the edge of a wharf at millwall. then, at the inquiry, it was discovered that his nostalgia for amoy was pure fake. he had never been there.[pg 54] he was born on a boat that crawled up-river one foggy morning, and had never for a day gone out of london.
there were many other delightful creatures of limehouse whose names lie persistently on the memory. there was afong, a chimpanzee who ran a pen-yen joint. there was chinese emma, in whose establishment one could go "sleigh-riding." there was shaik boxhoo, a gentleman who did unpleasant things, and finally got religion and other advantages over his less wily brothers, who got only the jug. faults they had in plenty, these throwbacks, but their faults were original. every one of them was a bit of sharp-flavoured character, individual and distinct.
in those days there was a waste patch of wan grass, called the gardens, near the quarter, and something like a band performed there once a week. o carnival, carnival! there the local crowd would go, and there, to the music of dear verdi, light feet would clatter about the asphalt walk, and there would happen what happens every sunday night in those parts of london where are parks, promenades, bandstands and monkeys' parades. in the hot spangled dusk, the groups of girls, brave with best frocks and daring ribbons,[pg 55] would fling their love and their laughter to all who would have them. through the plaintive music—poor verdi! how like a wheezy music-box his crinoline melodies sounded, even then!—would swim little ripples of laughter when the girls were caressing or being caressed; and always the lisp of feet and the whisk of darling frocks kissing little black shoes.
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[pg 56] 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[pg 57] 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.