A Domestic Night (Clapham Common)

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Title:     A Domestic Night (Clapham Common)
Author: Thomas Burke [More Titles by Burke]

THE LAMPLIT HOUR

Dusk--and the lights of home
Smile through the rain:
A thousand smiles for those that come
Homeward again.

What though the night be drear
With gloom and cold,
So that there be one voice to hear,
One hand to hold?

Here, by the winter fire,
Life is our own.
Here, out of murk and mire,
Here is our throne.

Then let the wild world throng
To pomp and power;
And let us fill with love and song
The lamplit hour.

At six o'clock every evening London Bridge vomits its stream of tired workers, hurrying home, most of them living at Clapham Common or similar places with a different name. Some of them walk home along those straggling streets which, after many years, reach the near suburbs; some of them go by car or 'bus. All are weary. All are gay. They are Going Home.

I think it was Mr. Mark Sheridan who was singing, some few years back, that "All the girls are lover-ly by the seaside!" I do not know the poet responsible for this sentiment, but I should like to take him to any of the London bridges and let him watch the crowd coming home at six o'clock. He was all wrong, anyway. The girls are not lovely by the seaside. If there is one place where the sweetest girl is decidedly plain and ill-kempt it is at the seaside. His song should read, "All the girls are lover-ly up in London!" And they are, whether they be chorus-girls, typists, shop-girls, Reuter's messenger-girls, modistes, or factory girls. Do you know those delightful London children, the tailors' collectors, who "fetch it and bring it home"? Their job is to take out the work from the big tailoring establishments to the dozens and dozens of home workers, and to collect it from them at the appointed time. You may easily recognize them by the large black-lining bundles which they carry so deftly under either arm. Mostly they are dear little girls of about fourteen, in short frocks, and mostly they are pretty. They have a casual manner, and they smile very winningly. Often their little feet tramp twelve and fourteen miles a day delivering and collecting; often they are sworn at by the foreman for being late; often they are very unhappy, and hardly ever do they get more than seven-and-sixpence a week. But they always smile: a little timidly, you know, because they are so young and London is so full of perils; yea, though they work harder than any other sweated labourer--they smile.

And over the bridges they come at nightfall, if they are not doing overtime, chattering and smiling, each with a Dorothy-bag, or imitation leather dispatch-case, each with a paper novelette, and so to the clear spaces of Clapham Common, now glittering with the lights of home, and holding in its midst a precious jewel--the sparkled windows of the Windmill Inn.

At home, tea is ready set for them and their brothers. Brothers are probably in warehouses or offices, somewhere in the brutal City; for every member of the suburban family earns something; they all contribute their little bit to help "keep the home going." Tea is set in the kitchen, or living-room, and Mother sits there by the fire, awaiting the return of her brood, and reading, for the forty-fourth time, East Lynne. Acacia Grove is a narrow street of small houses, but each house is pridefully held by its owners, and fierce competition, in the matter of front gardens, is waged during spring and summer. Now it is a regiment of soft lights, each carrying its message of cheer and promises of tea, armchair, and slippered ease. The fragrance of the meal is already on the air, and through the darling twilight comes the muffin-man and the cheery tinkle of his bell--one of the last of a once great army of itinerant feeders of London. Gaslight and firelight leap on the spread table, glinting against cups and saucers and spoons, and lighting, with sudden spurts, the outer gloom. A sweet warmth fills the room--the restful homeliness imparted by a careful, but not too careful, woman. The wallpaper is flaring, but very clean. The pictures are flaring, but framed with honest love. The dresser holds, not only crockery but also items of decoration: some carved candlesticks, some photographs in gilt frames, an ornament with a nodding head, kept there because it always amuses young Emmie's baby when she calls. Everywhere pride of home is apparent....

When the lady hears a familiar step, she lays East Lynne aside, pokes up the fire, places a plate in the fender, and a kipper over the griddle, where it sizzles merrily; for it is wasteful to use the gas grill when you have a fire going. Then the boys come clumping in, or the girls come tripping in, and Mother attends them while she listens to recitals of the days doings in the City. Sometimes the youngsters are allowed to postpone their tea until the big ones come home; and then they take a Scramble Tea on the rug before the fire. You take a Scramble Tea by turning saucers and plates upside down, and placing the butter in the sugar-basin, the sugar on the bread-board, and the bread, so far as possible, in the sugar-basin, and the milk in the slop-basin. Taken in this way, your food acquires a new and piquant flavour, and stimulates a flagging appetite. Or they lounge against the table, and help themselves to sly dips in the jam with the handle of a teaspoon, or make predatory assaults on the sugar-basin.

After tea, the bright boys wash, clean their boots, and change into their "second-best" attire, and stroll forth, either to a picture palace or to the second house of the Balham Hippodrome; perchance, if the gods be favourable, to an assignation on South Side Clapham Common; sometimes to saunter, in company with others, up and down that parade until they "click" with one of the "birds." The girls are out on much the same programme. They, too, promenade until they "click" with some one, and are escorted to picture palace or hall or chocolate shop. Usually, it is a picture palace, for, in Acacia Grove, mothers are very strict as to the hours at which their young daughters shall be in. Half-past ten is the general rule, with an extension on certain auspicious occasions.

It is a great game, this "clicking"; with very nice rules. However seasoned the player may be, there are always, in certain districts, pitfalls for the unwary. The Clapham manner is sharply distinct from the Blackheath manner, as the Kilburn manner is distinct from that of Leyton. On Clapham Common, the monkeys' parade is South Side; and the game is started by strolling from "The Plough" to Nightingale Lane. As the boys pass the likely girls they glance, and, if not rebuffed, offer wide smiles. But they do not stop. At the second meeting, however, they smile again and touch hands in passing, or cry over the shoulder some current witticism, as: "'Snice night, Ethel!" or "I should shay sho!"

And Ethel and Lucy will swing round, challengingly, with scraping feet, and cry, "Oooh!" The boys linger at the corner, looking back, and the girls, too, look back. Ethel asks Lucy, "Shall we?" and Lucy says, "Oooh--I d'no," and by that time the boys have drawn level with them. They say, "Isn't it cold?" or "Awf'ly warm 'sevening!" And then, "Where you off to in such a hurry?"

"Who--me?"

"Yes--you. Saucy!"

"Ooh--I d'no!"

"Well--shall we stroll 'cross the Common?"

"I don' mind."

Then boys and girls move forward together for the bosky glades of the Common. They have "clicked." They have "got off."

In the light evenings the children sometimes take Mother for a 'bus ride to Kingston or Mitcham, or Uncle George may drop in and talk to them about the garden. While the elders talk gardens, the kiddies play in the passage at sliding down the banisters. Having regard to its value in soothing the nerves and stimulating the liver, and to the fact that it is an indoor pastime within the reach of high and low, I never understand why banister-sliding has not become more popular. I should imagine that it would be an uproariously successful innovation at any smart country house, during the long evenings, and the first hostess who has the courage to introduce it will undoubtedly reap her reward....

There are, of course, other domesticities around Clapham Common on a slightly higher scale; for there are roads and roads of uniform houses at rents of £60 and £70 per annum, and here, too, sweetness and (pardon the word) Englishness spread their lambent lustre.

Here they do not come home to tea; they come home to dinner. Dinner is usually the simple affair that you get at Simpson's: a little soup followed by a joint and vegetables, and a sweet of some sort. Beer is usually drunk, though they do rise to wine on occasion. Here, too, they have a real dining-room, very small, but still ... a dining-room. They keep a maid, trim and smiling. And after dinner you go into the drawing-room. The drawing-room is a snug little concern, decorated in a commonplace way, but usually a corner where you can be at ease. The pictures are mostly of the culture of yesterday--Watts, Rossetti, a Whistler or so; perhaps, courageously, a Monet reproduction. The occasional tables bear slim volumes of slim verse, and a novel from Mudie's. There is one of those ubiquitous fumed-oak bookcases. They go in a little for statuettes, of a kind. There is no attempt at heavy lavishness, nor is there any attempt at breaking away from tradition. The piano is open. The music on the stand is "Little Grey Home in the West"; it is smothering Tchaikowsky's "Chant sans Paroles." There are several volumes of music--suspiciously new--Chopin's Nocturnes, Mozart's Sonaten, Schubert's Songs.

After dinner, the children climb all over you, and upset your coffee, and burn themselves on your cigarette. Then Mother asks the rumple-haired baby, eight years old, to recite to the guest, and she declines. So Mother goes to the piano, and insists that she shall sing. To this she consents, so long as she may turn her back on her audience. So she stands, her little legs looking so pathetic in socks, by her mother, and sings, very prettily, "Sweet and Low" and that delicate thing of Thomas Dekker's--"Golden Slumbers"--with its lovely seventeenth-century melody, full of the graceful sad-gaiety of past things, and of a pathos the more piercing because at first unsuspected; beauty and sorrow crystallized in a few simple chords.

Then baby goes in care of the maid to bed, and Mother and Father and Helen, who is twelve years old, go to the pictures at the Palladium near Balham Station. There, for sixpence, they have an entertainment which is quite satisfying to their modest temperaments and one, withal, which is quite suitable to Miss Twelve Years Old; for Father and Mother are Proper People, and would not like to take their treasure to the sullying atmosphere of even a suburban music-hall.

So they spend a couple of hours with the pictures, listening to an orchestra of a piano, a violin, and a 'cello, which plays even indifferent music really well. And they roar over the facial extravagances of Ford Sterling and his friends Fatty and Mabel; they applaud, and Miss Twelve Years Old secretly admires the airy adventures of the debonair Max Linder--she thinks he is a dear, only she daren't tell Mother and Father so, or they would be startled. And then there is Mr. C. Chaplin--always there is Mr. C. Chaplin. Personally, I loathe the cinematograph. It is, I think, the most tedious, the most banal form of entertainment that was ever flung at a foolish public. The Punch and Judy show is sweetness and light by comparison. It is the mechanical nature of the affair that so depresses me. It may be clever; I have no doubt it is. But I would rather see the worst music-hall show that was ever put up than the best picture-play that was ever filmed. The darkness, the silence, the buzz of the machine, and the insignificant processions of shadows on a sheet are about the last thing I should ever describe by the word Entertainment. I would as soon sit for two hours in a Baptist Chapel. Still, Mr. C. Chaplin has made it endurable.

After the pictures, they go home, and Miss Twelve goes to bed, while Mother and Father sit up awhile. Father has a nightcap, perhaps, and Mother gives him a little music. She doesn't pretend to play, she will tell her guests; she just amuses herself. Often they have a friend or two in for dinner and a little music, or music and a little dinner. Or sometimes they visit other friends in an exchange of hospitalities, or book seats for a theatre, or for the Coliseum, and perhaps dine in town at Gatti's or Maxim's, and feel very gay. Mother seizes the opportunity to air her evening frock, and father dresses, too, and they have a taxi to town and a taxi home.

Then, one by one, the lights in their Avenue disappear; the warm windows close their tired eyes; and in the soft silence of the London night they ascend, hand in hand, to their comfortable little bedroom; and it is all very sweet and sacramental....

[The end]
Thomas Burke's essay: Domestic Night (Clapham Common)

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