LONDON VENTURE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 257, 13 October 1932, Page 8

LONDON VENTURE

CAPITAL OF £8

WELLINGTON MAN’S EXPERIENCE

SOCIAL MASQUERADE.

After a more or less successful attempt to spend a working holiday in Loudon on an original capital of £B, a young Wellington man, Mr N. A. Dowling, has returned to New Zeland. He worked his passage from England in tho new mission vessel Southern Cross. Thrown on his own resources for more than a year in the world’s largest city, Mr Dowling learned a number of things. He found, as did a young man named Whittington, that the streets were not paved with gold. He discovered, on the other hand, that the average Englisman’s aloofness was only skin-deep. He learned the gentle art of keeping up appearances—of being a person of means and social position by day, and a hungry tenement dweller by night. He conceived a respect for humble East Enders, notably one Bob the Fishporter. Mr Dowling’s adventures began 20 months ago, he told “The Dominion” yesterday. He had a longing to visit England and the Continent, and proceeded to assuage it despite his lack of sufficient funds. COST OF LONDON LODGINGS, “I landed in England with £B,” he said, “and my first discovery was that living in London was not as cheap as it is supposed to be. Clothes and shoes were very cheap, but bed and breakfast in Highbury cost me 25s a week.” Mr Dowling’s first job was house-to-house selling. His wajes were silk socks and stockings, and he learned when calling at the houses of the aristocracy to announce himself not simply as a salesman, but as “a representative of British Industry from Elstree.” “You see,” he explained, “the silk stocking factory was at Elstree, but these customers were intrigued by the name of the big film centre, and I was usually able to gain a footing.” His greatest success as a salesman was the the sale of six pairs of silk socks to an Earl and six pairs of stockings to the Countess. Canvassing palled, and Mr Dowling obtained employment in an Oxford steel works. He was put on piecework, and might have made good wages but for the presence of rate fixers. "When you worked fast the rate fixers cut down the rate, and then all your fellow workers made a noise about it. The idea was to work slowly when the rate fixers were about, but I didn’t know them by sight.” TRIED A VAGRANT’S LIFE. A trip to Switzerland in search of work proved fruitless. Mr. Dowling attended a yodelling contest and returned to London, arriving with £3 in his pocket. He decided’ to try the life of a vagrant, and, after avoiding a policeman, climbed into St. James’ Park and slept under the trees. Three nights’ vagrancy were enough. He was hunted out of railway stations and other sheltered places, and found all the park benches occupied. For five months up to the Christmas season he sold vacuum cleaners, but the coming of the holidays brought about a slackness of business, and he was again out of work. He met and became friendly with an ex-Dunedin barrister who was nearly destitute, and the two shared a room with a genial Cockney named Bob the Fishporter. “The three of us lived at King’s Cross,” said Mr. Dowling. “The room had only one bed, and two of us slept on that while the third curled up on the floor -with a blanket or two and some newspapers.” Their principal diet consisted of porridge, and bread and margarine. SOCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS. In the meantime, Mr. Dowling had availed himself of a number of introductions to people of wealth and position. He and his barrister friend received many invitations to London homes, and thus began their little comedy of keeping up appearances. Usually they accepted only invitations that’did not involve the wearing of dress clothes or the necessity for reciprocal hospitality. Once they walked six miles to the home of a wealthy woman who was giving an “informal” musical evening. Funds being short, they had donated their share of the evening meal to Bob the Fishporter, after pointing out that, in all probability, a good supper awaited them. The entertainment proved to be a strictly formal one, and the supper a daintily microscopic repast. On another occasion Mr. Dowling played “rummy” all afternoon in fashionable company, and with tho hope of winning the price of a few meals. He won handsomely, but the prize was a box of expensive chocolates which were solemnly eaten that evening by the winner, the barrister, and Bob the Fishporter. SALE.OF “FIDDLED” FISH. The two social adventurers were at. pains to keep their only sartorial assets —lounge suits — spie and span. When the price of clean collars was beyond their resources they folded the soiled ones inside out. When the occasion demanded evening clothes they contrived to “mislay their luggage.” A little extra money came from the sale of “fiddled” fish to sundry men friends, including a New Zealand doctor at a London hospital, who practised vivisection and required fish to feed his little menagerie. A “fiddled” or “Kreislered” fish, it seems, is one that has been removed unlawfully and without colour of right from the fishmarket, so the least said about these transactions the better.

There came a day when Mr. Dowling was offered a passage to New Zealand on the recently-completed Southern Cross. He took it, bade farewell to the barrister, the fish porter, and the King’s Cross tenement. The game of keeping up appearances had been interesting in its way, but New Zealand was calling.