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LAZARUS, LOTUS-EATING
NINE o'clock on a Saturday evening, the place
Cornhill, and the want a policeman. Wonderfully
empty and still are the City haunts we have passed.
Curiously quiet, too, is the vast thoroughfare we
are in. Shops and warehouses, banks and offices,
are closed; and though here and there a blaze of
light tells you how to telegraph to India, or glimmers out of one of the upper windows of the
closely-shuttered houses you pass, the great street is wonderfully free from the feverish traffic of the
day. Lazarus starts up out of the shadows which
fantastically combine together on the pavement
under the illuminated clock to the left, and having
yielded to his prayer for pence, you and I look
out anxiously for a policeman to aid us in tracing
him home. Perhaps we carry with us a mysterious talisman which will at once enlist the sympathies and insure the cooperation of the force; perhaps we rely on our powers of personal persuasion;
perhaps we have justice on our side, and claim its
officers as allies ; perhaps we wish to test the truthfulness of the pitiful story he has told us;
or perhaps we are merely animated by a holy
hatred of beggars, and a wish to prosecute Lazarus
to the death.
Let us look at him again. Shabby canvas
trousers, a loose and ragged blue jacket, high
cheek-bones, small sunken eyes, a bare shaven
face, and an untidy pigtail - such is Lazarus. He
is one of the poor and wretched Chinamen who
shiver and cower and whine at our street-corners,
and are mean and dirty, squalid and contemptible, even beyond beggars generally. See how
he slinks
and shambles along; and note the astonishment
of the policeman we meet at last, when we tell
him we wish to follow the abject wretch home. We have gone through Cornhill and
Leadenhall-street, past the corner where a waterman is pottering about with a lantern
- a modern Diogenes,
who is perhaps looking for an honest man - and
are close by Aldgate pump, and in the full glare
of the huge clothing establishment at the Minories corner, before we come upon our policeman. New-court, Palmer's Folly, Bluegate-fields - that is
where the Chinese opium-smoking house is, and
that is where Lazarus is bound for.
"I know them Chinamen well,'' adds Mr. Policeman sententiously ;
"they'll beg, and duff, and dodge about the West-end-we won't have 'em here-and
never spend nothin' of what they
makes till night. They don't care for no drink,
and seem to live without eating so far as I know.
It's their Opium at night they likes ; and you'll
find half-a-dozen on 'em in one bed at Yahee's,
a-smoking and sleeping away like so many lime-kilns and dormice ! No, sir, it wouldn't
be at all
safe for you to venture up New-court alone. It
ain't the Chinamen, nor the Lascars, nor yet the
Bengalees as would hurt you ; but there is an uncommon rough crew of English
hangin' in and
about there, and it would be better for you to
have a constable with you, much better; and if
you go to Leman-street, the inspector will put
you in the way." This was all the information
we needed from the policeman.
Lazarus has shambled out of sight during our
colloquy, and so, hastily following him down
Butcher-row, Whitechapel, and resisting the fascinating blandishments of its butchers, who press
upon us "prime and nobby jintes for to-morrer' s
dinner at nine-a-half, and no bone to speak of," reach Leman-street and its police-station in due
course. A poster outside one of time butcher's
shops causes annoyance and regret for it announces a forthcoming meeting at which the difficulties besetting the trade are to be discussed in
solemn conclave at Butchers' Hall, and inspires one with an abortive desire to assist in the
deliberations. To hear the rinderpest spoken of by the
astute professors who have made money by it, and
to learn the causes assigned by salesmen for the
present price of meat, would be both instructive
and profitable; but, alas, some parochial guardians,
with whom we are at issue on the propriety of
stifling and otherwise maltreating paupers, meet
on the same evening, and for their sake the
butchers must be given up with a sigh.
Pushing through the small crowd outside the
station, Crossing a long flagged court, and ascending a few steps to the right, we
present our credentials to the inspector on duty. A one-eyed
gentleman is in the dock, and oscillates up and
down on the iron railing round it like an inane puppet whose wires are broken. He is
an Irishman, whose impulsive nature has led him to
savagely bite and scratch the landlord of a public house near, for having dared to
pronounce him
drunk, and for refusing him a further supply of
stimulants. The landlord prefers the charge, and
shows a bleeding forefinger, from which the nail
has been torn. Irishiman protests that he is a poor workin' man, who doesn't like to be insulted
;
tipsy friends of Irishman noisily proffer themselves
as witnesses to his general virtue and the extreme meekness of his disposition ; and then retire,
grumbling; "ten o'clock on Monday, before the magistrate, will be
the time for all that,''
being the answer given. Inspector, methodically
and with much neatness, enters name and address
of both the biter and the bit, and a few other
details, in the charge-sheet, and the man is removed. The landlord binds up his bleeding
hand,
and the next business, a shrieking lady with dishevelled hair, is proceeded with.
Bluegate-fields is not in this police district,
but the inspector will send a constable with me to
a station which is only five minutes' walk from
the place we want. Arriving here, the wail of a
feeble fatuous old booby, who has been in improper company, and is now crying over
the loss
of his purse, is the first thing we hear. "Yes, sir;
a bo'sun is right, sir ; and I only left my ship tonight. Seven pound thirteen, and a silver medal.
O Lord, O Lord ! Felt it in my pocket five
minutes before I left the mouse. Has a constable
gone? Deary, deary me !-seven pound, too, and
me only left my ship this blessed night!"
This, with a profusion of tears, and much
maudlin affection for the officers of the law. A
few minutes' delay, during which booby is gruffly
and fruitlessly recommended to "give up blathering, as that won't give him his money back, and
told what he ought to expect goin' along with such
cattle as that; then a slight bustle at the door,
and a hideous negress is brought in. From the
window of the inspector's little room we look down
upon the dock, see the sergeant beyond, who, pen
in hand, is entering particulars in his charge-sheet, while the ridiculous old prosecutor on
the
one hand, and the vile and obscene bird of prey
on the other, mouth and gibber at each other, and
bandy compliments of the fullest flavour.
"One of the worst characters about here; used
to be always up for robbing sailors and that, but
has been much better lately, and hasn't been here, O, not for more than a
month." The hideous
creature of whom this is said now adds her "blather'' to that of the old man,
and her protestations are the noisier of the two. Strange to
say, these protestations are for once well founded;
for at a sign from the inspector the sergeant again cross-examines the fleeced
boatswain as to where he felt his purse last, and the possibility of its
being on his person still. In time midst of solemnly incoherent asservations that
the negress has it, the sergeant's hand falls carelessly into the boatswain's
inside coat-pocket, and lo, the missing purse is held up aloft between the sergeant's forefinger
and thumb. Its contents are counted and
found right ; the negress declaiming vehemently against "the old wretch,''
and, with a shrewd eye to future difficulties, declaring, "It's always so
with pore me; people is always swearin' agin me,
and accusin' of me wrongfully.'' The old man
looks more foolish than ever ; and we, with an inspector, start on our mission,
leaving the sergeant
and constables in the midst of warnings and admonitions.
The time spent at the two stations has not
been lost, for it is now only half-past ten, and the
opium revels are seldom at their height before
eleven. There is no limit to the variety of nationalities patronising the
wretched hovel we are
about to visit. From every quarter of the globe, and more immediately from every district in London, men come to old
Yahee: the sole bond between them being a love of opium and a partiality
for Yahee' s brand. Sailors, stewards, shopmen, mountebanks, beggars, outcasts, and thieves
meet
on perfect equality in New-court, and there smoke
themselves into dreamy stupefaction.
There is a little colony of Orientals in the centre of
Bluegate-fleids, and in the centre of
this colony is the opium divan. We reach it by
a narrow passage leading up a narrow court, and
easily gain admission on presenting ourselves at
its door. Yahee is of great age, is never free from
the influence of opium, but sings, tells stories,
eats, drinks, cooks, and quarrels, and goes through
the routine of his simple life, without ever rousing
from the semi-comatose state you see him in now. The curious dry burning odour, which is making
your eyelids quiver painfully, which is giving your
temples the throbbing which so often predicates
a severe headache, and which is tickling your
gullet as if with a feather and fine dust, is from
opium. Its fumes are curling overhead, the air
is laden with them, and the bed-clothes and the
rags hanging on the string above are all steeped
through and through with the fascinating drug. The livid, cadaverous, corpse-like visage of
Yahee, the wild excited glare of the young Lascar who
opens the door, the stolid sheep-like ruminations
of Lazarus and the other Chinamen coiled together on the floor, the incoherent anecdotes of
the Bengalee squatted on the bed, the fiery gesticulations of the mulatto and
the Manilla-man
who are in conversation by the fire, the semi-
idiotic jabber of the negroes huddled up behind Yahee, are all due to the same fumes.
As soon as we arc sufficiently acclimatised to peer through the smoke,
and after the bearded
Oriental, who makes faces, and passes jibes at and
for the company, has lighted a small candle in
our honour, we see a sorry little apartment, which
is almost filled by the French bedstead, on which
half-a-dozen coloured men are coiled long-wise
across its breadth, and in the centre of which is a common japan tray and opium lamp. Turn which
way you wil1, you see or touch opium smokers. The cramped little chamber is one large
opium pipe, and inhaling its atmosphere partially brings
you under the drug's influence. Swarthy sombre faces loom out of dark corners, until
the whole
place seems alive with humanity ; and turning to your guides you ask, with
strange puzzlement,
who Yahee's customers are, where they live, and
how they obtain the wherewithal for the expensive
luxury of opium-smoking. But Booboo on the
bed there is too quick for you, and, starting up,
shouts out, within a volubility which is astounding
considering his half-dead condition a few seconds
before, full particulars concerning himself, his
past, his future, and the grievance he unjustly
labours under now. First, though, of the drug he smokes.
"You see, sar, this much opium, dam him,
smoke two minutes, sar -no more. Him cost
four pennies - him damn dear, but him dam good.
No get opium at de Home, say (the Home for
Asiatics); "so come to Yahee for small drunk, den
go again to Home and sleep him, sar. Yes, me
live at de Home, sar - me ship's steward - Bengalee - no get opium good as dis, except to Yahee,
say. Four pennies, you und'stand, make smoke
two minutes, no more ; but him make better
drunk as tree, four five glasses rum - you Inglesee like rum drunk, me Bengalee like opium
drunk, you und'stand - try him, sar ; he much good."
Thus Booboo, who is a well-dressed Asiatic,
in a clean shirt, and with a watch-chain of great
strength and massiveness. He has been without
a ship for five months ; has just engaged to go
on board one on Monday; shows me the owner's note for four pounds, and complains
bitterly that
they won't change it at the Home, or give him
up his box. "Me owe them very leetle, sar, very
small piece ; me there five mouths, and pay long time, and now they say, you give us money, and
we no give you change." Booboo looks a little
dangerous as he brandishes his opium-pipe ; and
old Yahee, who is lying on his back, within his eyes
closed and his mouth open, growls out an incoherent warning to be calm.
Mother Abdallah, who has just looked in from
next door, interprets for us, and we exchange compliments and condolences with Booboo.
Mother Abdallah is a London lady, who, from long association with Orientals, has mastered their habits
and acquired their tongue. Cheeny (China) Emma
and Lascar Sal, her neighbours, are both from home this evening, but Mother
Abdallah does the honours for her male friends within much grace and propriety -
a pallid wrinkled woman of forty, who
prepares and sells opium in another of the two-roomed hovels in the court: she confesses to
smoking it too for company's sake, or if a friend
asks her to, as yer may say, and stoutly maintains the healthiness of the habit.
"Vy, look at this 'ere court when the fever
was so bad. Who ad it? Not them as took
opium ; not one of em, which well you knows,
Mr. Cox, turning to the handsome bluff sergeant
of police, who has joined the inspector and the
narrator; "but every one else, and look at the old gen'elman there ; vy,
he's more nor eighty year
old, and 'ardly ever goes to sleep, bless yer, he
don't, indeed: he sings and tells stories the whole
blessed night through, and is wonderful 'ealthy
and clean. There ain't a cleaner old man than
Mr. Yahee, not in Bluegate-fields, and if you
could see him in the morning a-scrubbin' and
washin' his 'ouse out, and a-rinsing his clothes,
it 'ad do your 'art good. Does everythin' for his self, buys his own bits o' fish, and rice, and vegetables, and cooks and prepares them in
the way
they like it, don't he, Chin Chin?"
Chin Chin is a Chinaman, whose face is well
known at the West-end, and who lives by selling
tracts and song-books in the streets. He boards with Yahee, and pays one shilling a-day. Chin
Chin proves more sardonic than communicative,
and Mrs. Abdallah resumes:
"The old gen'elman has lived here these
twenty year, and has looked just the same, and allers done what he's a-doin' of now, made up the
opium as they like it, and had a few of 'em lodging within 'im. I don't pretend to make it as well
as he does, but I've lived here these dozen year,
and naturally have got into many of their ways. He ain't asleep, bless ye, sir; he'll lay like that
for hours. Look ! he's wakin' up now to light
his pipe agin, and then when it's later he'll begin
to sing, and'll keep on singing right through the night. That there young
Bengalee, asleep in the
corner, is another of his lodgers; he's a ship's
cook, he is, only he can't get a ship. They treat 'em shameful, just because they're darkies, that
they do, only allowing 'em a pound a month, and
sometimes ten shillins, and they have to find
they're own bacca out o' that. These men come
from all parts o' London to smoke Yahmee's opium.
Some on 'em sweep crossins; some has situations
in tea-shops; some hawks ; some cadges; some begs; some is well
off, some is ill off; but they
all likes opium, and they all knows there's no
opium like Yahee's. No; there ain't no difference in the quality; but you can't smoke it as
you buy it, you see, and Yahee has his own way
o' preparin' it, which he won't tell nobody. That
tumbler with the light in the middle has the
opium, and that thick stuff like treacle is it.
They just take it up with a pin this way, and roll it round and round, you see, and then when
it's like a little pea, so, they smoke away until
it's done. Tell the gen'elman how much you
smoke, Jack. They call 'im Chow Chee John
Potter, sir, because he's been christened; but he's not right in his head, and his own
country-people don't understand him."
Chow Chee is of an affectionate disposition,
and the effect of opium is to make him put both
hands on the knee of one of our party, and, after
advancing his smiling black face to within a few
inclines of his friend's nose, to wink solemnly, and
to say he "smoke as much as him get, sometimes all day and all night if Christians
peoples
good to Chow Chee."
On a suggestion being made that the opium
smoking should be supplemented by some other
stimulant, gin was chosen by such of the company as were not too stupefied to speak. Yahee,
we should mention, never lifted his head after
he had once silently welcomed our little party.
Coiled up on the bed, in trousers and shirt, and
with his shoeless feet tucked under him, he looked
like a singularly tough trussed fowl, and only
turned to the light at his side as his pipe was
refilled. Save in answer to our questions, there
was little talking. Chow Chee John Potter occasionally attempted original remarks, but they were,
as a rule, failures, and were so branded by his friends.
It was a sheer opium debauch; not noisy, not turbulent, not quarrelsome, but fervent,
all-engrossing, amid keenly enjoyable to those engaged in it.
As the evening wore on, several fresh arrivals
came in at the narrow door; among others, two
Malays, a Lascar, and the Chinaman many of us
have seem performing the knife-trick for the delectation of the British public. This last worthy
started back on seeing the police-sergeant, and in
very vigorous English asked what that particular reptile wanted here. In vain was it attempted
to soothe him with the assurance that it was all
right, and that he would come to no harm. In
vain did Mrs. Abdallah and some other ladies, who had by this time joined her in
the doorway,
protest to the fastidious knife-thrower that we
were "on the square". It was all useless; and
with a growl of baffled hate at the sergeant, and
a malignant scowl at the rest of the party, he
disappeared down the dark passage of the court, and was no more seem during our stay. We learnt
subsequently that he had just come out of prison
after a sojourn there of eighteen months, through the sergeant having convicted
him of offences too
hideous to describe. He was the only very black
sheep we saw. The others arc decent men in
their way, whose principal weakness is devotion to
opium, and who rarely give trouble to the police.
Old Yahee himself has, as mother Abdallah
stated, lived for more than twenty years in the
same hovel, for which he pays three shillings a
week rent ; and has spent the whole of that time in preparing opium for such smoking-parties as
we see now, and in making provision for his
boarders. Yahee is a consistent misogamist, and
allows no woman to interfere in his domestic arrangements. The chopsticks and
the plates for
breakfast and supper are washed by himself; his
two rooms are cleaned and swept, and every meal
is prepared in the same independent way. Such
of his customers as desire other society than that
of the choice spirits assembled to smoke, must
seek it elsewhere than at Yahoo's. He scorns to
offer adventitious attractions, and is content to
rest his popularity on his favourite drug. We have
now had the pleasure of visiting him four times,
have invariably heard the same stories of his
cleanliness and quietness, have always found him
in a stupor, and his establishment steeped in
opium-fumes. His sunken eyes, fallen cheeks,
cadaverous parchment-like skin, and deathly whiteness, make him resemble a hideous and long-forgotten mummy; while his immobility, and the
serene indifference with which he smokes on, whoever may be by, suggest a piece of mechanism, or
a cataleptic trance. How he manages his little
household, how he guards against imposition;
how his receipts and disbursements are regulated,
what check he has over the consumption of opium
by his customers, are mysteries.
Yet Mrs. Abdallah, the sergeant, the inspector,
Booboo, Lazarus, and Chow Chin, are unanimous
in saying that Yahee is a good manager, a shrewd
dealer, and, in his way, a reputable host. To lie
on your back and smoke opium with your eyes
shut until after midnight, and then to commence
fantastic anecdotes and still more fantastic songs, the offspring of your morbidly-excited brain; to
continue these songs and stories until morning,
and to then go out marketing for bits of fish and rice,-seems a trying mode of life for an octogenarian. Yet
Yahee does this, and seems to
thrive; that is to say, he is not less like life than when we were first shocked at seeing him nearly
three years ago. All the other opium-smokers here
are young men ; but the wrinkles of their host,
his sunken eyes, and falling under-jaw, make the
great age he is credited with probable enough.
Lazarus yonder is no longer the contemptible
wretch he was when we threw him a penny on Cornhill two hours ago. His frame has expanded,
his countenance has lightened, his mien has become bright and buoyant. Who knows time rapturous visions passing through his brain, or the
blissfulness which prompts that half-expressed
smile? The smallest-footed houris, the most
appetising birds'-nests and stewed dogs, nay, the
yellow mandarin's button itself, are Lazarus's
now. What cares he for policemen, for the cuffs
and kicks, the slurs and sneers, of the barbarians
from whom he has to beg? Yahee's shabby
stifling little room is his glory and delight. To
it he looks forward through the long and dreary
day; by its pleasures he is compensated for the
pains and penalties of his weary life. Booboo,
too, has already forgotten the grievance he recounted half an hour ago, and with eyes raised
to the ceiling, is in a rapturous half-trance. The
visions this miserable little mole has seen - the
sweet and solemn strains of music, the mighty feasts, the terrible dramas, the weird romances,
the fierce love, the strange fantastic worship,
the mad dreams, the gorgeous processions, the
brilliant crowds, the mystic shadows, which have
occupied it - would fill a volume.
Mr. Inspector Roberts, a friend to whom we have been indebted for much interesting information, tells us that before meals the strange
people lodging with Yahee are seen "to kneel down, and, looking up to the ceiling, jabber something to themselves" -a description which, we have
no doubt, a Malay or Chinese policeman would
have little difficulty in applying to the prayers of
English or other barbarians. But the interest
of the place is centred, not in the food or worship, not in the variety of skins, and their range
from drab and mahogany to ebon and jet, but in the strange unholy pleasures enjoyed in it, and
the glimpse it gives you of barbaric life.
Old Yahee is as exceptional an instance of
opium eating and smoking being pursued with
impunity, as any tremulous dotard who is seen
tossing-off his dram, and it would be as ridiculous
to quote the one as the other, as a fair example
of the influence of a degrading habit. Booboo
and the rest are full of grievances; complain they cannot get ships, or shall never see father or
mother, brother or sister, again - a handsome young
Malay was especially lachrymose on this last point - but the plain truth is, they are all such slaves
to the drug of which Yahee is high priest, that
when they once fall out of the groove of labour
to which they have been accustomed, recovery is
impossible. Like the dreamer in Lord Lytton's beautiful story, the day is less to them
than the
night; their heaven may be purchased by the few
pence they beg of passers-by; and those who remember the experience of Coleridge
and De Quincey when struggling to emancipate themselves from the
service of the opium-demon, will not wonder at the
utter self-abandonment of poor Lazarus and his
tribe. Mother Abdallah, Lascar Sal, Cheeny Emma,
and the rest, are the only Englishwomen he has
known ; and his existence is divided between a
misery which is very real, and a happiness which
is as fictitious and evanescent as that of the moth
killing itself at the candle's flame.
We saw Lazarus last cowering on time pavement
near Westminster Bridge; there is not a day in
which he may not be found, dazed and dreary,
ragged, wan, and wretched, in one or other of
our West-end streets. He gave a ghastly snub
when we reminded him of our evening at Yahee's ;
and lifting up his lack-lustre eyes, and cringing
more than ever, held out his tracts and mutely
asked for alms. His manner made a suggestive
contrast to the contemptuous air with which we
had seen him wave the same bundle of sorry literature at the opium-feast; and in this contrast
may be discerned the moral of Lazarus's life.
J.C. Parkinson, Places and people, being studies from life, 1869
click here for accompanying text
Gustave Doré, Opium Smoking, the Lascar's Rooms in
"Edwin Drood"
from London : A Pilgrimage, 1872
[ ... back to main menu for this book]
Opium Smoking Dens.— The best known of these justly-named “dens” is that of one Johnstone, who lives in a garret off Ratcliff-highway, and for a consideration allows visitors to smoke a pipe which has been used by many crowned heads in common with poor Chinese sailors who seek their native pleasure in Johnstone’s garret. This is the place referred to in the “Mystery of Edwin Drood” (see also RATCLIFF-HIGHWAY). A similar establishment of a slightly superior—or it might be more correct to say a shade less nauseating—class is that of Johnny Chang, at the London and St. Katharine Coffee-house, in the Highway itself.
Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879
see also J. Ewing Ritchie in Days and Nights in London - click here
see also James Greenwood in In Strange Company - click here
see also James Greenwood in Odd People in Odd Places - click here
see also Richard Rowe in Life in the London Streets - click here