Europe After 8:15
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H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright >> Europe After 8:15
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But last spring I met the girl in the flat below me. Her name was
Elsie--Winwood, I think. Of one thing, however, I am sure; she had cold
grey eyes and auburn hair--an uncanny combination; but she was typical
of the English girl, the girl who had been educated abroad. This girl
and I came face to face on the stairs one day.
"Why do you always leave London at the best time of the year?" she asked
me.
"I am young," I confessed. "In the spring I live by night, and one may
only sleep in London at night."
"But you do not know London," she told me.
She smiled intimatingly and disappeared into the gloom of her studio.
That night I thought of Arthur Symons's "London Nights." Nobody in any
city in the world had more subtly caught the spirit of youthful
buoyancy, the spirit of romantic evanescence, the spirit of midnight
abandon. Could it be that he was but a "poseur," a dealer in false
words, a concocter of the non-existent? Did the eyes of dancers never
gleam in his? Did Renee never issue forth from that dim arch-way where
he waited? Did Nora never dance upon the pavement? Was Violet but the
figment of a poet's dreams? And was that painted angel, Peppina, a mere
psychic snare? Could any man--even a poet--write as he did of Muriel at
the Opera if there had been no Muriel? It seemed highly improbable.
Finally I decided that, ere departing for Reine or Anna or Bianca, I
would sally forth into the night of London and see if, after all,
romance did not lurk in the darkened corners.
At first I started without a guide, trusting to my own knowledge of the
city, intending to follow up vague rumours to which I had lent but half
an ear. Later I equipped myself with a guide--not a professional guide,
but a man of means and of easy morals, a young barrister in whose family
were R. A.'s, M. P.'s and K. C.'s.
"Shall we see it all?" asked Leonard.
"All," I replied. "From the high to the low."
We set forth. It was eleven o'clock, and the theatregoers were swarming
in the Strand. We were heading for a great arch of incandescent light.
I was beginning to be disappointed. Visions of the dark-eyed Reine, in
veils of mauve and orange, silhouetted against the synchromatic scenery
of the Marigny swam before my eyes. I gave vent to a cavernous yawn. I
had often had supper at the Savoy. But such a performance was not my
idea of romance. I had never considered that luxurious dining room in
the light of adventure. But with Leonard's suggestion I entered and
found that, when the mental lenses are focused correctly, it in truth
possesses much of that same gorgeousness and lavish spirit which no
doubt invested the banquets of Belshazzar.
Thus begins the night romance of London:
Souper.
Oeufs de Pluvier
Consomme Double en Tasse
Fillet de Merlan a l'Anglaise
Pommes Nature
Caille Cocotte Armenienne
Buffet Froid
Salade
Petit Glace Parisienne
Friandises
This is arbitrary, however. On the crested bill of fare we learn that
there are other things to be had, but that they must be ordered _a la
carte_. Glancing down the mammoth card we begin reading such items:
_Saumon Fume_, _Pigeon Cocotte Bonne Femme_, _Rognons Sautes_,
_Champignons_, _Caille Royal aux Raisins_, _Tournedos Saute Mascotte_,
_Noisette d'Agneau Fines Herbes_, _Poussin de Hambourg Vapeur_,
_Medaillon Ris de Veau Colbert_, _Terrine de Boeuf a la Mode Glacee_,
_Supreme de Chapon Jeannette_ ... and so on, almost indefinitely. I saw
nothing in the fact--nor had I seen anything in the fact--that the menu
contained not one English word; but later in the week these affectations
of French dishes became highly significant. They were really the symbol
of London's night romance. They were the tuning fork which gave the
pitch for London pleasures. For romance and gaiety in London are grafted
to an otherwise unromantic and lugubrious hulk. All joys in that
terrible city are lugged from overseas, and, in the process of suturing,
the spontaneity has been lost, the buoyancy has disappeared, the honesty
has vanished.
But no people can be without romance. No nation can withstand forever
the engines of repression. Not all the moral lawmakers of England have
succeeded in stamping out the natural impulses. Hypocrisy, that great
mediator, sits into the game and stacks the cards. There is no more
sensuous dining room in the world than the Savoy. There is no more
impressive vision of human beings in the primitive act of eating than
can be gained from the top of the stairway which leads into that great
double room. And nowhere on earth is there a more cosmopolitan gathering
than sits down to the Savoy supper when the theatres are over. Here at
least is visual romance; and when we inspect the people at closer range
we glimpse a more intimate romance. One catches snatches of conversation
from a dozen languages within the radius of hearing. Here is modern
civilisation at apogee--the final word in luxury--the _denouement_ of
spectacular life. Go to the Aquarium in St. Petersburg, to the Adlon in
Berlin, to the Bristol in Vienna, to the Cafe de Paris; go wherever you
will--to Cairo, to Buenos Aires, to Madrid--the Savoy at the supper hour
surpasses them all. From the pantalooned giants who relieve you of your
outer garments to the farthest table in the room where the great windows
overlook the Embankment Gardens, there is not one note to mar the
gorgeous _ensemble_.
But we must not tarry too long amid the jewelled women, the impeccable
music and the subdued conversation of the Savoy. In fact, it is not
possible to linger. No sooner have we hastened through the courses of
our supper and started to sip a liqueur than we are suddenly plunged
into darkness. A hint! A warning! A silent but eloquent reminder that
the moral man must hasten to his bed, that midnight is upon us, that
respectability demands immediate retirement. When the lights come on
again there is a gentle fluttering of silken wraps, a shuffling of feet,
a movement of chairs. The crowds, preparing to depart, are obeying that
lofty English law which makes eating illegal after twelve-thirty. If you
tarry after this signal for departure, a Parisian born waiter taps you
gently on the shoulder and begs of you to respect the majesty of the
law. Within ten minutes of the darkened warning the dining room is
empty. Liqueurs are left undrunk. Ices are deserted. Half-consumed
salads are abandoned. Out into the waiting taxis and limousines pours
that vast assemblage. In fifteen minutes an atmosphere of desolation
settles upon the streets. The day is ended--completely, finally,
irrevocably. The moral subtleties of the fathers have been sensed and
obeyed. Virtue snickers triumphantly.
"And now?" I demand of my companion.
"S-s-s-h!" he warns. And, leaning over me, he pours strange and lurid
information into my gaping ear. "Now," he whispers, "to the Supper
Clubs, the real night life of London--wine, women, song and dance."
There is a mystery in his mien. And, obeying the warning of an
admonishing finger, I silently follow him into a taxicab. A low,
guttural order is given to the driver, the import of which is shielded
from the inquisitive world by my companion using his hands as a tube to
connect his mouth with the ear of the chauffeur.
I had heard of these supper clubs, but they had meant nothing to me. I
rarely ate supper and detested clubs. Their literature which frequently
came to me, had left me cold. But, as I was carried in the taxicab
through dark alleys and twisted streets, certain intimations in these
printed invitations came back to me with a new meaning. Lest the
iniquity of the London pleasure seeker be underestimated, let me supply
you with the details of one of these supper club circulars. I will not
tell you the name of the club: it has probably been changed by now. No
sooner do the police put one club out of business (so far as I can see,
merely to gratify the demand of the moralists that all sinners be flayed
in public) than it changes its name and reopens to the old membership.
Let it be noted here that in order to eat or drink in London after
twelve-thirty at night you must be a member of something; and to become
a member of a London supper club is not so easy a matter as one might
imagine. Traitors are forever worming their way into such societies, and
the management exercises typical British discretion in selecting the
devotees for its illegal victualing organisation. The club of which I
speak, and whose circular--a masterpiece of low cunning--lies before me,
has its headquarters on a street so small that in giving the address to
even the most erudite of London geographers it is necessary to mention
two or three larger streets in the neighbourhood.
The object of this club, it seems, is "to cultivate a form of art
previously unknown in England--the Cabaret." A noble and worthy desire!
But in the next paragraph we learn that this aristocratic uplift does
not begin until eleven-thirty P.M.; and by reading further we note the
implication that it ceases at one-thirty A.M., at which hour the
cultivation of this unknown art--the Cabaret--is supplanted by a Gipsy
Orchestra, to say nothing of the International Minstrels. Farther on we
learn that once a month the club gives a dinner to its members, and that
this dinner is followed by a "Recital Evening" in honour of and "if
possible" (Oh, subtlety!) under the direction of Lascelles Abercrombie,
Frank Harris, Arthur Machen, T. Sturge Moore, Ezra Pound and W. B.
Yeats. (Note: Although during the last year I have supper-clubbed
incessantly whilst staying in London, I think, in all justice to the
above-mentioned illustrious men, that it should be stated that not once
have I had the pleasure of being personally directed by any one of
them.)
One evening during the month, so runs the forecast, will be devoted to
John Davidson (I missed that evening); one to Modern Fairy Tales (I
somehow missed that evening also); another to Fabian de Castro and "Old
Gipsy Folk Lore and Dance" (Alas, alas, that I should have missed that
evening, too!). But this loss of culture, so far as I personally was
concerned (and other, too, I opine), was not accompanied by any physical
loss; that is to say, the statement on the manifest that during the
performance there would be available "suppers and every kind of
refreshment" is eminently correct, and veracious almost to the point of
fault. Even when the performance was not given--as seemed always to be
the case--there was no cessation in the kitchen activities. Suppers
there were and, what is more to the point, every kind of refreshment.
The most important item on this manifest I have saved until the last.
There is in it something of the epic, of the beyond, of the trans and
the super. I print it in capitals that it may the better penetrate:
NO FIXED CLOSING HOURS
Such is the unlucky star under which I was born that I have escaped at
these clubs all of the artistic and cultural performances. When I have
attended them no light has been thrown on the Drama, Opera, Pantomime,
Vocal Music, or "such delicate Art of the past as adapts itself to the
frame of an intimate stage, and more especially all such new art as in
the strength of its sincerity allows simplicity." Nor has it been my
luck to be present during the production of "Lysistrata," by
Aristophanes, or "Bastien et Bastienne," by W. A. Mozart, or "Orpheus,"
by Monteverde, or "Maestro di Capella," by Pergolese, or "Timon of
Athens," by Purcell. Nor have I been present when an eminent technician
has rendered Florent Schmitt's "Palais Hante," or Arnold Schoenberg's
"Pierrot Lunaire." All of which are booked for production or rendition.
And yet I cannot feel that my money has been entirely wasted. It has
bought me "every kind of refreshment," and catering by Frenchmen, and
the company of lovely ladies--ladies, who, I fear, are more familiar
with the works of Victoria Cross than the works of Aristophanes, and
whose ears are attuned to the melodies of Theodore Moses-Tobani rather
than to the diabolical intricacies of Schoenberg's piano pieces.
Let us indulge ourselves for a moment in what is known to ritualists as
a responsive service, thus:
Q.--What is a Supper Club?
A.--A Supper Club is a legal technicality--a system whereby the
English law is misconstrued, misapplied, controverted, disguised and
outdone. Specifically, it is a combination restaurant, cafe, and dance
hall, the activities in which begin at about one A.M. and continue so
long as there are patrons whose expenditures warrant the orchestra being
retained and the electric lights being left on. A Supper Club is usually
downstairs, decorated in the cheap imitation of a grape arbour,
furnished with small tables, comfortable wicker chairs, suave and
sophisticated waiters, an orchestra of from six to ten pieces and a
small polished floor for purposes of dancing. Supper Clubs are run to
meet every size of pocketbook. There are those whose patrons do not know
the titillating effects of champagne; and there are those where the
management serves no other form of febrifuge. Club members naturally
need no introduction to one another, with the result that such
formalities are here entirely dispensed with. In the better grade Supper
Clubs the ladies are not admitted unless in evening dress, while at
other establishments even such sartorial formalities are not insisted
upon. The object of a Supper Club is to furnish relaxation to the tired
business man, profits to the management, usufructs to the police and
incomes to the lady patrons. The principal activities of a Supper Club
are (1) drinking; (2) dancing; (3) wooing.
There you have it. In the Astor Club (or is it the Palm Club? Or has
the name been changed since spring?) one finds the higher type of
nocturnal rounder. Evening clothes are obligatory for all. Champagne and
expensive wines constitute the only beverages served. The orchestra is
composed of very creditable musicians; and the lady patrons, chosen by
the management by standards of pulchritude rather than of social
standing, are attestations to the good taste of the corpulent and
amiable Signor Bolis, owner and director. The men whose money pours into
the Signor's coffers are obviously drawn from the better class of
English society--clean-cut, clean-shaven youths; slick and pompous army
officers; prosperous-looking middle-aged men who, even at a supper club,
drop but little of their genteel dignity. On my numerous visits to this
club I failed to find one member who did not have about him in a marked
degree an atmosphere of deportmental distinction. Even during those
final mellow hours, when the dawn was sifting through the cracks of the
window above the stairs, there was little or none of that loud-mouthed
boisterousness which follows on the heels of alcoholic imbibitions in
America. Surfacely the Astor Club is an orderly and decorous
institution, and so fastidious were the casual "good evenings" between
the men and women that only the initiated would have guessed that ere
that meeting they had been strangers. Even under the protection of
membership and the police, the Englishman does not know how to laugh. He
is decorous and stilted during the basest of intriguing.
I had become a member of the Astor Club after as much red tape,
investigation and scrutiny as would have been exerted by a board of the
most exclusive social club. I had signed my full name, my address and
business, beneath which had been appended the names of two of my
sponsors. I had had a blue seal pinned beneath my coat lapel and an
engraved card sewn in my chemise. After which precautions and rigmarole
I was admitted each evening by the gorgeous St. Peter in red zouave
breeches and drum major's jacket who guarded the outer portal.
Have I given the impression that, once inside, I assumed virtues which
ill became me; that I sat apart and watched with critical eyes the
merriment around me? Then let the impression be forever blasted. I am
not a virtuous man according to theological standards. I have been a
hardened sinner since birth. I gamble. Beer is my favourite drink. It
has been flatteringly whispered into my ear that I dance beautifully. I
read Cellini and Rabelais and Boccaccio with unfeigned delight. I am
enchanted by the music of Charpentier and Wolf-Ferrari. I smoke strong
cigars. And I do not flee at the sight of beautiful women. In short, I
am a man of sin. Born in iniquity (according to the moral fathers) I
have never been regenerated. Therefore let me admit that the spirit of
the vice crusader was not mine as a member of the Astor Club. I spent
many a delightful half-hour chatting with Heloise Dessault, formerly at
Fouquet's in Champs Elysees; with Mizzi Schwarz, one-time frequenter of
the Cafe de l'Europe, in Vienna; with Hedwig Zinkeisen, of Berlin's
Palais de Danse....
Here is a characteristic thing about the London supper club: the
majority of the girls and--to London's shame let it be noted--the more
attractive girls are all from the Continent. Without these feminine
importations I doubt if the supper clubs could be maintained. At the
musical galleries--a third-rate supper place run by the Musical and
Theatrical Club at 30 Whitfield Street, near Tottenham Court Road, W.--I
was approached and greeted by a little French girl, whose knowledge of
English was almost as limited as is my knowledge of Russian.
But I was forgetting Elsie Winwood, and to forget Elsie in this
shameless chronicle would be disloyalty. At the Astor Club one evening I
met her. I realised then what that intimating smile had meant when, the
week before, she had met me on the stairs. I thereupon forgot Leonard,
and visited the night debaucheries of London in the company of the
grey-eyed, auburn-haired Elsie. I have every reason to believe that ere
I sailed back to America I had sounded the depths of London's
iniquities. By stealth and copious bribing, plus the influence of my
fair companion, I found that, though it was difficult it was
nevertheless possible to eat and drink and dance in London till dawn.
Yet at no place to which we went could I find anything unlike any other
city in the world--the only difference being that in London one must act
surreptitiously, while other cities permit all of the London indulgences
openly. Surely the night life of London is innocent enough! Why
membership in expensive clubs is necessary in order for one to enjoy it
is a question to which only British logic is applicable. The searcher
for thrills or the touring shock absorber will find nothing in London to
rattle his psychic slats. Even the professional moralist, skilled in the
subtle technicalities of sin, can find nothing in England's capital to
make him shudder and flee. The chief criticism against London night life
is that it is hypocritical, that it is sordid, because it is denied and
indulged in subterraneanly. The hypocrisy of it all is doubly
accentuated by the curious fact that the British public permits
trafficking in the promenades of its theatres, such as even New York has
balked at these many years. I refer to such theatres--called "music
halls," that they may be distinguished from the smaller houses in which
the serious drama is produced--as the "Alhambra," in Leicester Square;
the "Empire Theatre of Varieties," also in Leicester Square; the "Palace
Theatre of Varieties" on Cambridge Circus in Shaftesbury Avenue; the
"London Pavilion" in Piccadilly; and the "Hippodrome" at the corner of
Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road. Let us inspect their vaudeville
offerings. Let us snoop into their wares. At these theatres, equipped
with numerous and eminently available cafes, women, frail and fair, sit
and walk about on the promenades and generously waive introductions when
the young gentlemen evince a desire to speak to them. But there is no
romance here. These promenades are even without illusion. Here, among
the theatres, is where London tries to be Paris. Just as she tries to be
New York in Regent Street. Here is where the most moral town in
Christendom discovers her native hoggishness. Here is the great slave
market of the English.
But we are out for vaudeville and not for slaves, and so we pursue our
virtuous way up the stream of amiable fair until we reach the Palace
Music Hall, where a poster advertising a Russian dancer inspires us to
part with half a dozen shillings. Luxurious seats of red velvet, wide
enough for a pair of German contraltos, invite to slumber, and the
juggler on the stage does the rest. Twenty times he heaves a cannon ball
into the air, and twenty times he catches it safely on his neck. The
Russian dancer, we find, is booked for ten-thirty, and it is now but
eight-fifty. "Why wait?" says the fair Elsie. "It will never kill him."
So we try another hall--and find a lady with a face like a tomato
singing a song about the derby, to an American tune that was stale in
1907. Yet another, and we are in the midst of a tedious ballet founded
upon "Carmen," with the music reduced to jigtime and a flute playing out
of tune. A fourth--and we suffer a pair of comedians who impersonate
Americans by saying "Naow" and "Amurican." When they break into "My
Cousin Carus'" we depart by the fire escape. We have now spent eight
dollars on divertisement and have failed to be diverted. We take one
more chance, and pick a prize--Little Tich, to wit, a harlequin no more
than four feet in his shoes, but as full of humour as a fraternal order
funeral.
Before these few lines find you well, Little Tich, I dare say, will be
on Broadway, drawing his four thousand stage dollars a week and longing
for a decent cut of mutton. But we saw him on his native heath,
uncontaminated by press agents, unboomed by a vociferous press,
undefiled by contact with acquitted murderers, eminent divorcees,
"perfect" women, returned explorers who never got where they went, and
suchlike prodigies and nuisances of the Broadway 'alls. Tich, as I have
said, is but four feet from sole to crown, but there is little of the
dwarf's distortion about him. He is simply a man in miniature: in
aspect, much like any other man. His specialty is impersonation. First
he appears as a drill sergeant, then as a headwaiter, then as a gas
collector, then as some other familiar fellow. But what keen insight and
penetrating humour in every detail of the picture! How mirth bubbles
out! Here we have burlesque, of course, and there is even some horseplay
in it, but at bottom how deft it is, and how close to life, and how
wholly and irresistibly comical! You must see him do the
headwaiter--hear him blarney and flabbergast the complaining guest,
observe him reckon up his criminal bill, see the subtle condescension of
his tip grabbing. This Tich, I assure you, is no common mountebank, but
a first-rate comic actor. Given legs eighteen inches longer and an
equator befitting the role, he would make the best Falstaff of our
generation. Even as he stands, he would do wonders with Bob Acres--and
I'd give four dollars any day to see him play Marguerite Gautier.
But enough of theatres! There are two night restaurants in London
which should be mentioned here. Let what little fame they may attain
from being set down in these pages be theirs. They more nearly
approximate to youthful whole-heartedness than any institutions in the
city. Perhaps this is because they are so distinctly Continental,
because they are almost stripped of anything (save the language spoken)
which savours of London and the British temperament. They are the Villa
Villa, at 37 Gerrard Street (once the residence of Edmund Burke), and
Maxim's, at 30 Wardour Street. Their reputations are far from spotless,
and English society gives them a wide berth. Because of this they have
become the meeting place of clandestine lovers. Here is the genuine
laughter and the wayward noise of youth. Nine out of every ten of their
patrons are young, and four out of every five of the girls are pretty.
Music is continuous and lively, and they possess an intimacy found only
in Parisian cafes. Do I imply that they are free from sordidness and
commercialism? They are not. Far from it. There is no night life in
London entirely free from these two disintegrating factors. But their
simulacrum of gaiety is far from obvious. When the fifteen-minute
warning for evacuation is given a good-natured cheer goes up, and a peal
of laughter which shakes the chandeliers and drowns out the musicians.
The crowd at least sees the humour of the closing law, and, being unable
to repeal it, laughs at it. In the Villa Villa and Maxim's, hands meet
lingeringly over the table; faces are near together; and a public stolen
kiss is not a rarity. When the doors of these restaurants are locked on
a deserted room the exiles do not go decorously and dolorously home. In
another hour you will see many of these same couples dancing at the
supper clubs.
Here we are again in Signor Bolis's establishment--which means that we
have made the round.... Elsie is yawning. I, too, am tired of the dance
and sick of the taste of champagne. I motion the waiter and pay the
bill. I draw Elsie's long coat about her, and we pass out into the clear
London night. We walk home circuitously--down Cranbourn Street and into
Charing Cross Road where it turns past the National Gallery into St.
Martin's place. Through Duncannon Street, we enter the Strand, now
almost deserted save for a few stray figures and a hurrying taxicab. We
then turn into Villiers Street, and in a few minutes we are on York
Terrace, overlooking the Thames embankment. The elm trees and the
beeches stand about like green ghosts in the pale night. At the edge of
the water Cleopatra's Needle is a black silhouette. We should like to
walk through the Gardens in the starlight, but the formidable iron gates
are locked against us. So we turn up Robert Street into Adelphi Terrace.
We lean for a moment against the railing.
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