In Darkest London

London is a city of sudden and violent contrasts. You can step from comfort and security of existence into destitution within a few minutes. This sounds incredible; but it can be done as I have proved. I wanted to find out how the woman without a home, without a reference, without money, friends or a decent wardrobe, supports life. Well, I did find out, and what I have learned has impressed itself upon my mind with a rigidity that time itself cannot reduce.⁠ ⁠…

I left my home one evening in February. I wore my own clothes, which were shabby, but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat⁠—and not one penny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle. I would arrive in London with nothing but my personality between me and starvation. To do this I went to Euston, and mingled with the crowd of passengers on the 9: arriving from Liverpool.

The door was flung wide open, and a good-looking young woman in a dilapidated fur coat and battered feathered hat burst in. She flung a brown paper parcel on the floor with a gesture of tragedy.

“There it is,” she cried, “my old man’s washing⁠—I tell you he won’t want it again for sixteen months.”

She was all strung up as she spoke, and then, suddenly, she collapsed, and crouching down on the bench beside the parcel began to cry. I have never seen a woman cry as she did. The most emotional outburst of the women of the middle class is reticent, almost austere, by contrast. It seemed an intrusion somehow, to witness such devastating grief. Her body shook with big sobs, interspersed with coughs, sneezings and other primitive methods of expression. All conventional barriers were down⁠—the woman was raw, bleeding, utterly unable to hold herself in.

I did not do either of these things, though I wanted to. But I determined, however I got it, I would have breakfast. I stood at the top of Southampton Row, and eyed the men on their way to their business. And then I selected a well-dressed individual about forty, with shrewd eyes and a certain humorous twist of the mouth. He wasn’t a literary man, I knew that, nor was he in commerce. I judged him to be a barrister, and I went straight up and opened my case.

“You’ve got a lot of money,” I said, brightly.

He stopped, as I knew he would stop, curious to see what would happen.

“Well,” he said, “what about it, if I have?”

“I want some breakfast,” I said calmly.

“Tell me why I should buy you any?”

“Because I have brains,” I said, desperately. The imaginary odour of frizzled bacon fired my will.

“If you have brains,” he answered, “use them to get some breakfast with.”

“I have,” I retorted, quickly. “I have chosen you.”

And at that he smiled, and then began to laugh, and I knew the day was won. For a man may resist tears, harden his heart to importunity, turn aside invective, but there is no son of Adam, who, can deny a woman when she makes him laugh.

As I emerged from one of the courts that intersect the main road at the foot of Blackfriars Bridge I was conscious of being followed. As I walked a shuffling, hesitant tread came behind me. When I stopped the unknown creature stopped as well. It was an eerie feeling, and it broke through the somnolence of nerve and muscle, awaking a sense of actual fear. Stirred to watchfulness, I could not bring myself to look round, but hurried on through a tangle of courts and narrow streets. And then I knew that the more I hurried, the more frightened I should get. Already the pursuer was invested with devilish attributes; I felt as though I were going to scream. But I got a grip of myself and stood quite still, waiting for the enemy to come up to me.

Along the pavement shuffled a pitiable looking woman, with the worst pair of boots that I have ever seen. She was hugging a shabby looking bundle and shivered every now and then with the cold. Her face was ageless with suffering, her eyes seemed to have lost all memory of hope.

“Is there anything you want?” said I. “Can I do anything for you?”

“It’s lonely like,” she said. “I’ve been by myself all the evening. I felt I’d like to be near someone for a bit.”

It was an eerie night. The sleep for which I longed, the sleep for which body and soul were craving would not come. There was something rather terrible in the presence of this army of the night; I felt myself encompassed by a tide of human desolation which at any moment might overpower and swamp me. I had found the workhouse cell solitary, but there was something worse than solitude in that huge bare ward crowded with beds. Not for one moment was there peace; there was a stirring as of the leaves in a dense forest, to a continual accompaniment of coughing. I never knew there were so many and such variety of coughs. One poor thing hacked hour after hour, her handkerchief soaked with blood. No one slept kindly, no one found rest. When the continual stirring of the leaves was still, there was a sound as of the wind over the sea, and once a woman’s voice screamed out in agony, “I can’t breathe⁠—I can’t breathe.”