[-12-]
CHAPTER II.
THE "BEEHIVE."
I HAVE surveyed myself most carefully, and my impression is
that "my own mother wouldn't know me". My face - well, perhaps the
less said about it the better, for it is absolutely repulsive by reason of the
dirt that covers it. My shirt matches my face, and my coat accords with the
appearance of both. Waistcoat and shirt-collar have alike been discarded, and a
particularly unclean neckcloth of the familiar costermonger type has taken the
place of both. My boots are broken and patched. My hat is a frowsy looking
specimen of the flexible "deerstalker" type. I don't exactly know what
I look like. Portions of my attire are reminiscent of a broken-down clerk of
dissipated habits. Other signs are suggestive of a welsher "out o'
luck;" while, again, I'm afraid I am not unlike a returned convict who has
allowed his hair to grow. But, at all events, I venture to flatter myself that
if any of the strangely varied company whose acquaintance I am desirous to
cultivate, present a more inharmoniously disreputable appearance than myself,
they must indeed be very [-13-] far gone on what is
sometimes termed the "downward path to destruction."
I put the finishing touch to my disguise by inserting between
my teeth a short clay pipe: and forth I sally in the direction of Brick Lane.
That thoroughfare has been to some extent rendered classic by the facile pen of
"Boz." But if it ever did produce a branch of the Grand Junction
Ebenezer Temperance Association, times have materially changed. Temperance is
the last thing the inhabitants of Brick Lane would think of in these degenerate
days. There is no "young 'ooman" there now who would think of drinking
"nine breakfast-cups and a half of weak tea;" and the principal idea
relative to water appears to be that it is, of course, an evil, but to some
extent a necessary one, inasmuch as beer cannot be brewed without it. There is a
public-house at every corner, and it is needless to say that each and all of
them are always full.
I have selected the "Beehive Chambers" as my
resting-place for to-night. It is a substantial looking building at the corner
of one of the many narrow, squalid streets that intersect Brick Lane. There are
always half a dozen filthy, drink-sodden, tobacco-breathing men lounging about
the doorway, and it is to one of these that I venture, not without some
misgiving, to introduce myself. I go up to him, and inquire if he has a light to
spare. He looks round with a surly grin, and says with emphasis-
"No, I ain't."
This is unpromising, and I suppose I look as [-14-]
though I think so, for he continues, "There's a pub, over theer, and
you'll get one easy enough."
The man is a jewel! He has given me the very opportunity for
which I am seeking, and I instantly thank him for the information, and ask him
if he'll come and have a drink.
Will he? Of course he will. He says that I'm a good fellow,
prefixing this expression of opinion with an expletive which I am not bound to
record. He puts his arm through mine, at which I shudder inwardly, but try hard
to look as though I like it, and conducts me into a low public-house, steaming
with the foetid breath of half-intoxicated men and women, and reeking with the
strongest and rankest of tobacco-smoke.
We are supplied with two "'arf pints of four ale,"
and I am enabled to take stock of my companion. He is a stout man with a pale,
flabby, clean-shaven face. His eyes twinkle with suppressed merriment, and the
surly look his countenance wore when I first accosted him, vanishes like snow
beneath the sunbeams as the pot is inverted and its contents trickle lazily down
his throat. When the vessel is replaced upon the counter, a smile of ineffable
content and peace steals over his features, and I am emboldened to unbosom
myself to him, and tell him the story I have previously arranged, to which he
listens sympathetically enough. I am, I tell him, in a terrible pickle. I
haven't done a stroke of work for six months, and my landlady has turned me out,
and seized my clothes and effects in lieu of the rent due [-15-]
to her. I have no money, or next to none. Last night I walked the streets
because I could not make up my mind to go into a lodging-house, but I'm afraid I
shall have to now. And then I sigh heavily, and order my friend's pewter pot to
be refilled.
He hitches up his nether habiliments (he is lightly clad in a
coat and pair of inexpressibles, both fearfully and wonderfully patched, and
held together by all kinds of ingenious contrivances). Then he tells me, that as
regards my goods, the landlady has no right to take them, and that were he in my
place he would go and talk to the "madgestrate." He knows that it is
hard to take to the lodging-houses.
"It nearly broke my 'art when I fust did it," he
says. "I'd walked about the streets a hull week before, and I shouldn't ha'
gone then on'y I was that sleepy I dozed off with my 'ead agin a bloomin'
lamppost, till a copper woke me up."
"How did it come about?" I ask; and he tells me a
long story of the chanticleer and bovine quadruped type, about a legacy of
"five 'undred pound," that lured him to drink and dissipation; about
his desertion by his friends, who had dropped off "as I dare say yours ha'
done now you're down upon your luck !" and about a quarrel with a nephew,
whose ingratitude goaded him to conduct that led to an interview with a
magistrate, and "fourteen days." Here he absently lifts my pewter pot
to his lips and drains it of its contents. He starts, appears surprised,
apologizes for his mistake, and then proceeds, at my request, to enlighten me as
to the Beehive and its occupants.
[-16-] "I've been
there," he says, "ever since the 'ouse was opened, and that's a good
ten 'ear -"
"Ah, but it ain't wot it used to be," interrupts a
voice, which, on turning round, I perceive to belong to a. short blear-eyed man,
with a stubbly beard of gingery hue. "I remember it when the old proper-ryator
was alive, and there wasn't a better 'ouse, nor a more conducted in all Lunnon,
but now-" and he stops suddenly, leaving me to infer from his remarks, that
the choice spirits that once were wont to frequent the Beehive have gone to that
bourne from which no dosser can return, and that the establishment itself is in
a condition of decadence.
"That's Sandy," whispered my companion. "We
all as nicknames 'erc. I'm Bluegownd, I am-haw! haw! haw!" and he bursts
into a guffaw at the facetious humour which has invested him with that
mellifluously sounding, but not altogether appropriate, pseudonym. "The 'ouse,"
resumes Mr. Bluegown, "ain't wot it wos, as Sandy says. There's a lot o'
decent men, and there's a lot o' riff-raff. Some on em's thieves, and some on
em's wuss. Bt the most is decent chaps. Rough an' ready, you know; you mustn't
mind 'em. Some on 'em would come up an' give you a punch o' the nose by way of
an 'ow-de-do, but it's all sport. It's better than most of the 'ouses, a'ter
all. The beds is clean, and the deppity's a decent chap. There's a good kitchen,
'ot water, plates an' dishes, cups an' saucers an' tea-pots." Here he casts
a furtive glance at his empty pewter mug as if to see if he will be asked to
refill it, and finding that no [-17-] such
invitation is proffered, he says - sooth to say with a somewhat chagrined air -
"We'd better go now, if you're willin', an' I'll show you the rights an'
wrongs of the place."
Arm in arm we enter the narrow, dirty, dimly-lighted passage
which leads the way into the inner cells of the Beehive. There is a little
office there and I pay my fourpence, receiving in exchange a dirty piece of
paper, on which is written "Sat. 259. pd." - which, translated for the
benefit of the reader, signifies that the night of my admission is
Saturday, the number of my bed two hundred and fifty-nine, and that I have duly
paid for the privilege of enrolling myself among the gentlemen whose lodging is
the Beehive.
"Come on," says Bluegown, "come on, 'ere you
are; this it the readin' room."
The apartment dignified by this title is so dark that I can
but dimly perceive there are some rough forms and tables in it, and that
Bluegown and myself are the only gentlemen of tastes sufficiently literary to be
there.
"Why do they call it the reading-room?" I ask.
"Cause there ain't nothin' to read there, I s'pose,"
retorts my friend, seizing my arm and conducting me into another apartment,
where he announces with conscious pride that "this is the kitchen."
This the kitchen ! this the "good kitchen"
that Bluegown had so proudly described, and the advantages of which he had so
eloquently enumerated. "I ask your pardon, coach," says the Irish
proverb, "I thought you were a wheelbarrow when I stumbled over [-18-]
you." If Bluegown had not told me that this was a kitchen, I should
have taken it for a magnified rat-hole - so dark, so stenchful, so unwholesome,
does it appear. It is a large low-roofed room, furnished with tables and benches
which are near relations to those I have already seen in the
"reading-room." There is a disused cooking-range at the extreme end,
on which I seat myself, and survey the room and its occupants. Most of the
latter are dock-labourers, a few are pickpockets; some work in the various
markets; some are hawkers, some only "cadgers;" while a shoe-black box
or two lying about show that there are some few members of the boot-cleaning
fraternity.
On either side of the range is an open fireplace, in which an
enormous coke fire burns fiercely. The hot water about which Bluegown has told
me is hissing and boiling in a large copper. There are the tea-pots, plates,
cups and saucers, the use of which is included in the value given for your
fourpence; and in addition, the proprietor kindly provides with each utensil an
enormous quantity of dirt gratis. A thin wan-faced girl, wearing a red frock and
looking like a dilapidated Tilly Slowboy, flits, ghostlike, backwards and
forwards; but the majority of the guests appear to wait upon themselves. There
are gentlemen engaged in culinary operations at each of the fires, and the
staple food of the place appears to be "'addicks." Close to me, and
bending over the blazing coke, is a man whose villainously ugly face, matted
hair, and occupation, forcibly remind me of that illustration in "Oliver
Twist" wherein Cruick-[-19-]shank depicts
Fagin frying sausages, surrounded by his worthy friends and hopeful
pupils; and, except that the place is larger and the company more numerous, the
whole aspect of the room is by no means unlike that of the robber's dwelling as
described by the novelist.
The whole apartment reeks with dirt and filth. The blackened
ceiling, the boarded floor, the plastered walls, are all begrimed and bedaubed
with the dirt of months past. The atmosphere is stifling. There is not a farmer
who breeds pigs for an agricultural show who would suffer one of his porcine
treasures to live in a sty so filthy as this room, or to breathe an air so
foetid as that in which these men are sitting. Prize pigs, however, have a
monetary value, and these poor wretches have none.
There are some sitting alone, sullen and disconsolate,
speaking to no-one and answering no-one who speaks to them. Others are
discussing their appetizing, if not too clean, suppers of whelks, "'addicks,"
or "sassages"; others, again, are chatting to their neighbours, and
some few are enjoying a friendly hand at cards. I cannot understand much of the
conversation, but I do grasp sufficient to comprehend what a wonderful amount of
scope there is for the exercise of ingenuity in the pleasant and facetious arts
of oath-framing and blasphemy.
While I have been engaged in making these observations, the
worthy Bluegown has been heaping coke on each of the enormous fires. He is, as
he tells me, "respected in the 'ouse," and nearly every one has a [-20-]
word for him. As I am a stranger, he kindly introduces me to
"Ginger-beer," "Copper-head," and "Scotty,"
gentlemen whose faces, clothes, and conversation are apparently designed to
illustrate the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of the adjective
filthy.
Bluegown also entertains me with some particulars relative to
himself and his avocations. He depends principally for a living, he says, on
washing the shirts of the frequenters of the house, for which he charges
fourpence apiece. I remark that, judging from the filthiness of the garments and
the probable unpleasantness of the job, the work is well worth the money.
"Bless yer," returns Bluegown, "there
ain't a real dirty 'un - what I calls a real dirty 'un - 'ere to-night. Some on
'em as I get to wash is covered with wermin. W'en I gets old o' some o' them
scaly-backed 'uns, as I calls 'em - haw-haw-haw! I just lays em out on the flags
and scrubs em with a blessed long broom. 'Blue-gown,' the chaps says sometimes,
'Bluegown, you scrubs 'em in 'oles more'n a bit, but you do clean 'em,
I'll say that for yer.' And by --- some of 'm wants some cleanin,' I tell
yer."
I now have an illustration of the kind of "friendly 'ow-de-do"
alluded to by Mr. Bluegown during our conversation in the public-house. A man,
evidently in good spirits, and presumably with a large quantity of spirits of
some sort in him, lurches unsteadily up the room, and gazing intently at
my worthy companion, aims a blow at his mouth which knocks the [-21-]
clay pipe out of it and shatters it to fragments. Notwithstanding his
previous injunction to me, my "guide, philosopher, and friend" appears
inclined to resent this kindly attention, and makes a remark relative to the
eyes and limbs of his assailant which induces that worthy to volunteer his
opinion that Mr. Bluegown is a "bloomin' ill-tempered old" something
or other which I fail to hear, but which the reader can possibly imagine.
Thereupon the injured gentleman expresses sentiments decidedly depreciatory of
the chastity of his comrade's mother; and facetiously hints at the existence of
a bar sinister in his pedigree. The matter now threatens to become serious; but
I effect a reconciliation between the friends by offering Bluegown my own pipe
in lieu of the one so unfortunately destroyed. The offer is accepted, and I am
grasped violently by the hand, and assured by each party that I am a good fellow
of a sanguinary disposition, a compliment so remarkably contradictory in itself
that for a moment I hesitate about receiving it without a modest protest.
So the evening wears on. When the public-houses close the
room becomes full; the oaths are more frequent and ingenious; the smell is more
unpleasant, and the legs of the company are more unsteady. Most of them, as Mr.
Bluegown complacently observes, are " more'n a bit rafferty." The
various degrees of intoxication are exemplified to an extent I have never seen
before. There is the old cripple in the corner who is "mad drunk," and
who is brandishing his wooden leg, and vowing the destruction of [-22-]
any one who comes within its range. There is the sweep opposite him who
is merely jovial, and who is hiccoughing out, in his drunken merriment, the
disgusting refrain of a repulsive song. There are two old men close to me who
have reached the maudlin stage of inebriety, and who are discussing some matter
or other with a grotesque solemnity which is inimitable. Lastly, there is that
majority of the guests whose intoxication is only made manifest by the thickness
of their utterance, the unsteadiness of their nether limbs, and, worst of all,
by the foulness of their breath, which makes the atmosphere absolutely
unbearable, and determines me to quit the kitchen without delay and seek the
couch distinguished by the number 259.
The night-porter takes me in charge, and shows me where I am
to "doss." Up a narrow, ill-lighted staircase we go, the boards
creaking unpleasantly beneath our feet, until we reach the second floor. Here
the night-porter bids me "good-night," promising to call me at
half-past four. And for the first time I begin to realize what a very unpleasant
task, to say the least of it, is now before me.
The room is ill-ventilated, stuffy, and unpleasant. The beds
are narrow wooden structures about a foot high, and are packed so closely
together that there is no room for a man to stand between them. There are
notices at each end of the room, posted in compliance with the Act regulating
these places, which state how many beds are permitted by the inspector, whose
signature is appended, to be placed in the room. On [-23-]
what principle the inspector acts who attends to the regulation of the
Beehive it would be impossible for me to say. Whatever it may chance to be, its
absurdity is sufficiently demonstrated by the condition of the dormitory in
which I am to pass the night. When I enter there are only about half a dozen
dossers in bed, and the room holds several times that number. Yet already the
atmosphere is distinctly unwholesome, and one can readily imagine what it wil1
be like when all the beds are occupied by men whose personal cleanliness is an
unknown quantity, and who exhale an odour which, however suggestive it may be of
the quality of the exciseable liquors sold in the district, is unpleasant in the
highest degree.
I undress, placing my clothes under my pillow, partly to
raise it to something like a reasonable height, and partly in order to prevent
the disappearance of my apparel during the night - a precaution which is adopted
by most in the room, and which speaks volumes as to the character of my
neighbours. Turning down the bed-clothes, I discover that the rug, the two dirty
sheets, and the scanty coverlid bear this inscription-
"Stolen from
J. SMITH,
Beehive Chambers,
Brick
Lane."
So that any larcenous intention I might have harboured is
hopelessly frustrated.
There are insects in the Beehive-but they are not [-24-]
bees. I believe Mark Twain has termed them "chamois"; and
"a military officer," whose identity has been lost among the many sons
of Mars that flourish on the shores of Green Columbia, has delicately alluded to
them as "darned catawampous chawers that graze upon a human purty
strong," so "strong," indeed, as to make one temporarily
oblivious of the advice tendered by the same gallant officer, "Don't mind
them; they're company."
It is some little time before I am enabled to sleep. The
stertorous breathing of my fellow-dossers disturbs. me. Half-drunken and
wholly-drunken men are continually lurching up the stairs and knocking against
the corners, until I wonder how they contrive to reach the top at all; the noise
of street-brawls is borne in through the open windows; and, lastly,
"chamois-hunting" occupies a considerable portion of my time, and
keeps me, as one of my neighbours observes, "on the kee-veevers." At
length I fall asleep, but only for an hour-an hour of restless tossing to and
fro, of unrefreshing dozes, of starts and twitchings, and most unpleasant dreams
- and then I wake up to find that the room is full now, and that the foul breath
of the drunken fellows who lie there like so many hogs, snoring and grunting
with far more sonority than melody, has poisoned the air so that it seems almost
plague-stricken. Many of them are stark naked; most thin and emaciated; all
filthy and wretched. Beds, sheets, coverlids, are all covered with vermin, and
the walls are spotted with foul creeping things almost as large as cockroaches.
It is disgusting! It is horrible!
[-25-] Hastily, and with a
feeling of inexpressible nausea, I huddle on my clothes. Down the stairs I
creep, and through the dirty passage into the grey dawn-light. The cool morning
breeze feels more delicious than words can express, and to me, hot and fevered,
sick and faint as I am, it is the keenest of pleasures to feel that I am quit of
the horrible place in which the last few hours have been spent. I would not
mortgage the prospect of a change of garments and a. bath for all the fabled
wealth of El Dorado. Uppermost among the thoughts that struggle for utterance is
the reflection that they told me that the den I have just left was "one of
the best of the 'ouses;" and as I hurry through the almost deserted streets
I murmur to myself, "Great God! What must the worst be!"