Some Curious London Scenes.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 9729, 4 January 1908, Page 4 (Supplement)

Some Curious London Scenes.

; (By W.R.Gr., in the People's Friend)

If yon are one of those London err, /who loot upon the City as the eastern limit of their London, and l who woukf :io more think of travelling- beyondl Aldgate Pump than of setting out lor Constanti!nop:e or Pekin, let- me take you for a ■etioll in a district which at least looks upon everything west, of the City as nuburban, ana! the Strand' and Piccadilly a.-, very nice places in their way—evert .'i : 'the <ruide-books pai it, "wall worth .1 visit." We may look in at a theatre 0.1 the way, a theatre which you may ha eitrprised to learn is unique in the four kingdbme. But, then, almost everything in Whitechapel is surprising when you see it first. You may have had a vague impression of Whitechapel as a dense rookery inhabited, ■chiefly by- the unromantic Jew. But ■Whitechapel Road, you is a broad airy- street, one of the broadest in London., it has an cdlginsr of green trees 011 bet.; sides, and is a pleasant boulevard with a ; sedate charm that not even; the whizzing motor 'buses are able entirely to destroy. It is not a wealthy street certainly, but it shows no signs of pulsing poverty. You .can count cn finding a shoeblack at tlte 'corner. A cab rank etretc' es down the middle -of the street. But what strikes one first of all is tli2 unmistakably foreisn air of the place. Weird notices in Yiddish stare at one from all' sorts of places—from-, hoardings, •from the windows of restaurants, of public houses, of cheap tailors. To the English eye Yiddish is as foreign as Chinese. It looks aa if it we're written upside down. If. you turn it upsicfe dow..i "it looks as if it- were wrong end' first-. But in this part of London Yiddish is "far more the native speeech than is English.. It is a 1 sort of world language—an ■ Esperanto that links the Austrian Jew .to the Whitechapel Jew, and- the .Polish 'with the Spanish. It is a hotch-potch of ■Hebrew and! German, with a sprinkling 'from half the dialects of Europe. The rt-alk around you is hoarse andl guttural, with a touch of Gaelic in sound 1 . r And! the" faces are as foreign as thi voices. There was a time when Whitechapel was looked upon as the typical London slum, but durinjr the last halfTcentary the home-grown Whitechapel has been- Lrrachially elbowed l out, and to-day four-fifths of tne' faces you meet are Jewish,

There on our left as we walk <>sst from AUTgate Pump is the famous Jewish market. Middlesex street is the prosaic nam a at the corner, 'but then. Petticoat Lar.o, like Ratcliffe Highway, c-eems io be trying to live down its past. It is Saturday,, and. the street is bare and' empty. The little shops, with their German-Jew-ish names, have their shutters up. But if you come back here on Sundl.vy vou will •find the lane and Wentworth street. a Sense mass of life, through which it. i; possible to push one's way only by ir.eh&T. Here you can buy socks at a penny a pair, and boots at half a crown. Ther? are china: stalls, bookstalls, etails clamorbus with alarm clocks, cycle-repairing stalls, stalls of any kind.' you can think of. Medicines do "a busy trade, and 1 at one of them half a dozen men are needed .to hand! out the stuff. There you see a gigantic pair of scales, warranted! to bs precisely the same ais these on which the jockeys ; weigh in at Ascot. Here is a mail making rings out of French pennies and selling them as specific against rheumatism. At every other utall there seems to "be a clothes auction, at which the prk' of a. pair of trousers will jump down the scale from seven-an<J-6Jx to eighteenpe-nce. The buyer vaguely fits them en, folding" •them in, front ofhis waist, then thrq.vs them over his arm and pushes hio wat out.- :..;... .arv.;--. ..:, .- ..•-■•:-■

- The--PetticoatiLiane merchant,vyou. wiil observe, is .'apt--- to concentrate hie advortising oh his ,dwn. person, audi to w£a." simultaneously a sporran, a red l wig, and a pair of. riding .boots if he thinks -they; will jcatch your- eye. Tlte Lane is nothing if Mot enfernrising. "Most of the facea arourxji.you. ar.e Jewish- and- the salewomen big-boned,- well-built Jewesses, with blac'i hiar piled high above their foreheads. In middle age, yova notice, they are- apt .to run to flesh." And the voices are of all

I sorts from that of t!)e Russian or Polish I Jew, with little-but an elementary krcow-

ledge of English eoiaage.jirKl l a ""Yes" a:p.d "No" to back! ;'iip- to that of the> educated' Eiiglgjb Jew. But every man is brimful of business 1 instinct. More than one.Park -Lane 1 millionaire lias started; with a barrow in the La;:e. A little 'further on, where the tra-mcars- from Bloomsbury cress) : -the street, the Commercial Road! branches away to the right, running a dlrab three miles through the heart of the English East End- to Poplar, with: its Chinese and Japanese quarters, amcl!.passing most of the big ■iticks on its way.

l\ow on our lei; stands the iWhitechapc-1 Art Gallery and- Library. That Art Gallery in itself makes Whitechapel worth a" visit. In freshness and' originality it is far ahead of more famous galleries in the West. It is a gleam of light in the greyness- of Whitechapel light. In the evening and on Sunday it is thronged ' with Whitcchai>el types that make many an artist- pull out his sketch book. For this little gallery attracts hundreds from the enterpris-inp' West. In. the spring there was an exhibition of'model public parks and back gard'ena and window-sill gardens, with lectures an the scores of waxs in wnich the country can be brought to -town, and; touches of color aa'ied to the grey life of East End; streets. Just now there is. an exhibition of "Animate in Art." varying from fourteenth century tapestrks to Holman Hunt and: the friezes of the Parthenon' to- Rubens and l Caraii d'Ache. It is an exhilarating little gallery. I cannot- keep from limiting when I think of the broad! grins on the faces of a group that stood the other day. around a puppy by come obscure Japanese eculptor —a-pupnv with its ribbon, almost' hidden in rolls of fat, and a deliriously silly expression'on its face that -would-make-a. eat laugh—and: stare. _ : There, on the other cade, close beside ft Mary's -Station, is Wonderland, the home : of East End boxing. A theatre with the stage knocked out, it is a vast place, and on°a Saturday night, when the .close rows of bare benches are packed) with excited! Audi polyglot critics, deserves an; hour or two from the curious explorer. The atmosphere is heavy with the reek of cha." andl plug. A collar and tie are looked upon as novelties. Boys edge their 'wayalono- the benches selling cigarettes and) "eel jelly; very good gruD. gents!' But if the air of tne place is primitive the fighting is good, andl- Won-■a-erland, evein more than the. Sporting Club in Coven*- Garden, attracts, k-nt" of all London, aiid. the home coun\a& here we are in front of the Yiddish theatre, the Pavilion. The name formerly stood for all that was rich and vlorfous, thiillmg in the way ot blood and thunder melodrama, but auout a couple o. veais a>o, when the Paulion, it seem ed, wa* berig leu high and my by the steads ebDing ot the English population HonrWhitecnapel and tie inundation 01 L ho Jews, an e\penment wa=, made with some \iadsnpla\s ihe e.pei-ment was tncicughy suuce.siul. and to da., f„ew sn theatie is a peimanent institution the Companj i» oid>vn iiom all o\er Jiu lope and the states Tnere aie Run-ian oews, lolish Jcv:, Geiman. Jews, ana ■Vmeucan Jews Iheie is no local school ot acting as vet, but, piobably that will cme in tune, 101 W Mtchapel could eas lv support two or tluee theaties moie !New "loik, I belie\e, has hali a dozen liddioh theatres of standing, Le-idea sevcial music halls. And the Pauhon is almost alwa.vc full to the doois bliaKespeaie, Uauptmann, grand opera, and comic opeia ha\e 110 teirors 101 a company tiamed 111 tne theatres oi two continents lhe pio I pnetor, Mr eLgmund Eeinman, hau a name J as well known 111 America as is that 01 Adler, "the Jewish living ' llie acting looks seuiia, but naturalh o.ie would appieciate it better if one un der_toocl Yiciush But if you evei go there and do not know lidclish, V warn you not.to let the lact be known You will L-e simplv ciushed with kindness tea last time 1 went a lady at my side a=ked me a question I guessed -what she meant, and handed her my progiamme, making a wild guess at the actprsname. fahe said— *You no understand 1 '" an J muted her Hand to.vaids the stage < "Xot a word" the started off v.ith a tush to| explain if. ly by means of a \ery'sni3ll

I batch cf English words. Then she stuck, I and'.turned despairingly to her neighbor. He smiled, but. shook his head. Then 112 leant over to a gill in front of him, who looked at me pityingly and said—"l no spik Engleesh." Anotner girl was called into council, but after jerking out excitedly—"Him lather, his sister," she could onry shrug : her shoulders and smile. -And at the end of the act that man\wandered along two rows of stalls looking for someone to ,helj>. the 'beni'i-nted 'foreigner.- At last a little girl came and changed places with a man 011 my left. .She deemed flattcied'by the attention I was arousing, and the faces that kept bobLing rcuiid in my direction. "ion see the big man with the beard and the iong trousers?" she began. "That Vasil Besmsnofi'. -He's a member of Par: liament. Aiid that stout man smoking the long pipe is Teteieff. He's bis lodger. That b:g girl with the wriggly eyebrow,; is his louger, too. She's in lovo with" Pjoter—him with the-.wavy wax moustache. • He's Vasil Besmenoft's son. That's Polia 'there, the daughter of old Pertchickin, the bird dealer. She's in love with'-.Nil, the engineer, the man with his face all dirty. They're laughing at him lor being dirty. And Nil is in Jove with the lady in black sitting on the sofa. Hi.' won't many her though. He says she knows too much. See, she's a teacher. She's got a book in her hand. I wish he'd wash his face. -It's awfully nice-looking when it's washed. That's the doctor > .there. He was Sckischkin in the first act. He's put on a beard, and he thinks we 1 don't know him. Theie's JS r il making the black woman cry now. She's a big cry- : baby."

"Why is he in,love with her then?" I asked.

"Oh, I suppose he likes her dress. I'm sure I don't," she-remarked scornfully. ... Nil had just, finished a speech. The theatre broke into loud cheers. "He says,"-my interpreter whispered, ."that it is better to drink the red wine than,; the blood of the people. That makes the Anarchists glad." '"Oil, yes," there are Anarchists here," sli3 went on. "And policemen without their helmets —in plain clothes, T mean.!' "Why, what do'they expect?" I asked. "Bomb-throwing V"' "Oh, I don't think so. Anarchists don't-' throw bombs. One comes to our house every week. Ho only sings silly songs about his heart flying up into the sky like a bird. They never do anything exciting. I-wish they would.". "But you'-u get hurt, you know." "Oh, no. Father's here, and they know him. They wouldn't hurt me." The curtain came down on the act. The actors passed before it, but the cheering and shouting went on. The orchestra gave. up in despair, and laid aside their instruments. A speech was wanted, and at last a lively man stood up in an upper box and begsn speaking excitedly. I caught the words "Hyde Park." Some one tapped him en the shoulder,- but the speech went en. - A moment-Jater he was forced out of the box. I heard! afterwards that the police had forbidden political speech-mak; ing from the; stage that day. It was Labor Hay. An. Anarchist newspaper; had bought up the performance. In a little the hubbub died, away and the curtain, -rose again. Decidedly, the;. Yiddish theatre avoids the-cardinal-sin; of dulness. : ; "'