Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  One morning he left the shop in the ordinary way at twelve, and went straight to his aunt’s, as usual, to dinner. In the middle of the meal he glanced at the clock and started up. It was half-past twelve and he was not nearly through his meal, although he ought at that moment to be back in the shop. He experienced quite a shock, and sank into his chair again in some agitation. Then he took a second glance at the clock and found that he had made some mistake — it was really only 12.15. How he could have made such a stupid blunder he could not, for the life of him, imagine. But he regained his calmness and went on with his dinner.

  It was exactly half-past twelve as he re-entered the shop. Mrs. Owen was behind the counter, and her expression was not one of pleasure.

  “Where have you been since you came back from dinner?” she asked.

  Roberts told her that he had but that moment returned.

  “But you came back and hung up your hat a quarter of an hour ago.”

  Roberts didn’t understand it, and said so. He had left at twelve, had gone straight to his aunt’s, had eaten his dinner, and now had returned — at 12.30, the proper time.

  Mr. Owen was sent for. He corroborated his wife’s statement. A customer had called in Roberts’s absence for something which was among the stock in his charge, and consequently could not be got at. Then the customer had gone out. She had scarcely left the door when Roberts was distinctly seen to enter it, closely followed by another customer, a Mrs. Jones, well-known in the shop, and proceed to hang his hat upon its proper peg. Mrs. Owen had observed for the apprentice’s information that he had come now that he wasn’t wanted, which remark was taken no notice of. Roberts then, staring about him in an absent, preoccupied manner, had taken down his hat again and gone out of the shop, producing a remark from Mrs. Owen to the effect that she “should like to know where he was off to now.”

  Roberts, of course, could only totally deny all this.

  “I couldn’t have gone home, eaten my dinner, and got back here in a quarter of an hour. My aunt will tell you I have only just left,” he said.

  But he was in a decided minority, and in the midst of the discussion, Mrs. Jones, the customer, came in again, and was at once appealed to by both parties.

  She had been to the shop before, she said, at a quarter past twelve. She had most certainly distinctly seen Roberts in Rating Row approaching the shop a yard or two in front of her, and she had followed him in. She had seen him hang up his hat, she had heard what Mrs. Owen had said about his coming when not wanted, and she had also seen him replace his hat upon his head and go out again, followed by Mrs. Owen’s words as to where he was off to now.

  Roberts began to have very serious doubts of everybody’s sanity, including his own. He could only most vehemently protest that he certainly had not returned until half-past twelve. But his master and mistress preferred to believe their own eyes. So at last he went home again and fetched his aunt, who corroborated his story entirely, and produced proofs that she could not possibly have been mistaken.

  Then everybody stared at everybody else, and all agreed that it was a most singular adventure, and one of those things that nobody could ever understand. Which nobody ever did.

  A DOUBLE CASE

  IN a large stone house, which, for America, was an old one, situated upon the banks of the Ohio, in Switzerland County, Indiana, there lived in 1845 Mr. and Mrs. B —— . Mrs. B —— was the daughter of a clergyman of some wide celebrity, the father of a fairly numerous family.

  On the 15th of September, 1845, Mrs. B — — ‘s youngest sister, Janet, was married to Mr. Hugh N —— , and the bride and bridegroom came to the B — — ‘s house for the honeymoon. The third day after their arrival an invitation was received, in response to which the whole family, visitors and all, went to a neighbour’s house, about a mile away, to spend the day. During the afternoon, Hugh N —— , with two sons of the host, set off for a walk to a neighbouring village, with promise of a speedy return. Their return, however, was not speedy, and after waiting some hours for them, the visitors decided to return home and leave Hugh to follow when he got back, more especially as Mrs. B — — ‘s two small children were betraying very strong signs of the approach of bed-time.

  Accordingly in the early evening, just as a beautiful full moon rose, the party set out, and arrived home without any noticeable incident.

  “I shall just run upstairs and take off my walking dress,” said young Mrs. N —— , to her sister. “I shall be down again as soon as you have got the children to bed.” And she went upstairs accordingly.

  Two verandahs ran along the whole front of the house, one on the top floor and one below, the higher one commanding a very fine view of the river. When Mrs. N —— reached her room and looked through the open French window, she saw her husband sitting on a chair on this verandah, smoking a cigar, in the manner of one enjoying the breeze from the river and the bright moonlight.

  He must have come straight home, thought the young wife, and then she said:

  “Why, Hugh, how long have you been here? Why didn’t you come home with us? What will the W —— s think at your coming straight away here without bidding them good-night?”

  There was no reply. The figure sat immovable.

  Janet stepped out.

  “Has anything offended you, dear? What is the matter?”

  Still no reply. She approached him, and reached to put her arms about his neck, and — the figure was gone!

  She caught the rail and almost swooned. There stood the chair, empty.

  “Hugh! Hugh!” she cried, feebly, but there was no response. Then she summoned her remaining strength and staggered downstairs to her sister.

  Mrs. B —— was with the children. Janet almost fell into the room, wringing her hands and weeping. “He has gone — he has gone — I have lost him! I know I have lost him! Something fearful has happened to Hugh!” and she broke clown utterly.

  After some little time Mrs. B —— coaxed her into sufficient tranquillity to relate what had happened. Mrs. B —— was not a woman of weak nerves, and did her best to persuade her sister that she must have been mistaken. While they were talking, Mrs. B —— looked toward the door of the room, and there stood a boy. It was a lad who worked about the place as a sort of handy factotum. He was a good lad, fond of playing with the children, and always willing to do anything to amuse them. He came in a step or two, in a bashful way customary with him, and looked about the room as though in search of something or somebody.

  “Frankie is in bed, Silas,” said Mrs. B —— , “and asleep.”

  The boy only smiled and turned away. Mrs. B —— could see him, however, from the window, walk back and forward before the front door of the house. Then she recommenced her attentions to Janet.

  Presently Mr. B —— came in. He asked for Silas.

  “He must be close by, I think,” said Mrs. B —— , “he was in here only a minute or two ago.”

  Mr. B —— went out and called Silas, but got no reply. He went all over the premises, high and low, but there was no Silas. Nobody except Mrs. B —— and her sister had seen him. He had been out all day. So Mr. B —— gave up the search.

  It was about two hours after their first return when a familiar step was heard at the door, and in walked Hugh N —— ; this time the actual man. Nothing extraordinary had happened to him, he said. He certainly had only just returned, direct from the W —— s house, after leaving his two friends. Didn’t understand what Janet could have seen.

  Silas was not seen till breakfast the next day.

  “Where have you been since yesterday morning, Silas?” was Mrs. B — — ‘s immediate question.

  Silas had been up at the island, a couple of miles away, near his own home, fishing, and he said so.

  “But you were here last night?”

  “Oh, no. Mr. B —— gave me leave to go fishing all day yesterday, and told me I needn’t come back, so I stayed at home last night.”

  And the
re was no doubt about it. Mr. B —— had given him the holiday, and Silas, it was afterwards clearly shown, had been in his parents’ home when Mrs. B —— saw the figure in the doorway.

  Nothing unusual happened either to Mr. N —— or to Silas. Mr. N —— survived his wife many years, and Silas perhaps is now — certainly was until lately — a thriving tradesman at Chicago.

  THE END

  TALES OF MEAN STREETS

  This set of stories and the novel Child of the Jago were regarded by the worthies that chose the books for Hull public library as far too hard hitting to be on general loan (reported in the Hull Daily Mail of 25 February 1902) and these short stories certainly present images and scenes of gritty realism. Reviews were mixed, with the Fortnightly Review of February 1897 stating that although Morrison “abandons the hideous and revolting… his treatment of the dreary and depressing is exaggerated. His idea that monotony and tedium are exclusive to the slums is false. It is a property of all streets, of life itself, and a description of any community could convey this feeling. Morrison’s public avidity for sensation, and injudicious critics, have corrupted realism in literature, and one regrets this in Morrison because he has given proof of the power of better things”. The contrasting opinions of this book are reflected in other publications: the Athenaeum (November 1894) found the stories “absolutely convincing”; The Bookman of 1 March 1895 found the stories “scrupulously truthful,” but The Spectator of 9 March 1895 accused the author of exaggerating the woes of poor people in the East End, in spite of the skill and force of his writing. Perhaps the problem lay in the genre; this is Morrison’s only short story collection and although it has all the elements of classic Morrison story telling — graphic descriptions of poverty and low living — it almost reads like written sketches for a longer piece. The opening tale The Street illustrates this perfectly, with a gripping and even shocking word painting of the East End that pulls no punches— “Nobody laughs here — life is too serious a thing; nobody sings.” It would be all too easy to regard this without question with a certain horrible fascination, but the modern reader needs to temper this by studying non-fiction works such as the report produced by Maude Pember-Reeves on the eve of the 1914-18 war, Round About a Pound A Week, which although it will sadden the observer with the toil and monotony of the lives it depicts, gives a slightly more balanced view of life in the East End.

  However, for the purposes of giving the aspirant working and middle classes of the Victorian age an opportunity to do some armchair ‘slumming’, these stories are perfect. In the first tale, Lizerunt, we meet Lizer, a young woman who is pretty and has spirit, but who ends up married at eighteen to a brutal, shiftless man for whom she bears three children by the time she is twenty-one. In Without Visible Means a group of men, left penniless by being caught up in a strike, go on the tramp to other areas looking for work – how well will they support each other as they seek employment? In Behind the Shade a mother and daughter increasingly struggle to make a living and boxing is the theme in Three Rounds. In Business and Squire Napper we can observe what happens when a poor family comes into money and On the Stairs also centres around a gift of money, but in very different circumstances. A woman is the harbinger of doom in A Poor Stick.

  These stories are not just of value for their dramatic content. In To Bow Bridge there is a wonderfully evocative description of travelling on a London omnibus in which one almost feels right there, sat on the bench seat with the people described, and in That Brute Simmons, a gently humorous tale, a Mr. Ford makes a totally unexpected visit to the Simmons family home, with equally unexpected consequences. A pithy commentary on subversive politics is the theme of The Red Cow Group. Morrison presumably does not aim to demean the leading character in A Conversion when he depicts him as an inveterate thief incapable of reform; rather it is a commentary on what poverty does to a man. This story is interesting as it makes reference to Flower and Dean Street, the most notorious thoroughfare in Whitechapel, which readers of the time would have known about as a street central to the Whitechapel murders of some years before.

  The final tale in the book is All That Messuage, about an older man, who uses his life savings to buy a property and become a landlord, but due to his lack of experience he soon encounters problems.

  One could view these stories as character sketches, as some of them are quite short, but they are an eclectic selection of themes, even if the characters are very similar to those depicted in Morrison’s novels. The collection is well worth reading for the wonderful details of East End life that Morrison, with his journalist’s eye for detail, readily noted in his research for the book. Perhaps the happiest outcome from this publication, however, was that it came to the notice of the Rev. Jay, who approached Morrison with a view to writing a longer work along the same lines. The result was A Child of Jago.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

  INTRODUCTION. A STREET.

  LIZERUNT.

  I. LIZER’S WOOING.

  II. LIZER’S FIRST.

  III. A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES.

  WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS.

  TO BOW BRIDGE.

  THAT BRUTE SIMMONS.

  BEHIND THE SHADE.

  THREE ROUNDS.

  IN BUSINESS.

  THE RED COW GROUP.

  ON THE STAIRS.

  SQUIRE NAPPER.

  A POOR STICK.

  A CONVERSION.

  ALL THAT MESSUAGE.

  TO WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

  INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

  It was considered an intrepid thing for Walter Besant to do when, twelve or thirteen years ago, he invaded the great East End of London and drew upon its unknown wealth of varied material to people that most charming novel, “All Sorts and Conditions of Men.” Until then the West End knew little of its contiguous neighbor in the East. Dickens’s kaleidoscopic views of low life in the South of London were manifestly caricatures of the slum specimens of human nature which he purposely sought and often distorted to suit his bizarre humor. Mr. Besant may be fairly considered as the pioneer of those who have since descended to the great unchartered region of East London, about which, so far as our knowledge of the existing conditions of human life in that community are concerned, we remained until, as it were yesterday, almost as ignorant as of the undiscovered territories in Central Africa. Contemporaneous with Mr. Besant’s “discovery” of East London began the eastward march of the Salvation Army, which has since honeycombed this quarter of the metropolis with its militant camps. Gradually the barriers were thrown down, and the East has become accessible to literature and to civilization as it never had been to the various Charity and Church missionary organizations.

  It was as the secretary of an old Charity Trust that Mr. Arthur Morrison first made his acquaintance with East London, and by dint of several years’ residence and attentive study acquired his knowledge of the East End and its myriad denizens. Right in the midst of the great square bounded by the Thames, the Lea, the City, Kingsland, and the Hackney open spaces lie the dreary “Mean Streets” which Mr. Morrison has described with uncommon power and vigor, and among which the operations of his secretaryship engaged him laboriously for years. The possibility of presenting his observations of East London in narrative form began to grow upon him while casting around for literary pabulum to convert into magazine articles, and in October, 1891, appeared his first sketch, entitled “A Street,” in “Macmillan’s Magazine.” This, in a remodelled form, now serves as an introductory chapter to the present collection. The article in “Macmillan’s” attracted a good deal of attention, and won for its author the good fellowship of Mr. W. E. Henley, who encouraged him in his idea of writing a series of short stories and studies which should describe East End life with austerity, restraint, and frankness. A large number of the “Tales” appeared in the “National Observer” and several followed in the “Pall Mall Budget.” The dedica
tion to Mr. Henley of “Tales of Mean Streets” is a grateful acknowledgment by the author of the kindly and frank counsel of his friendly critic; whose criticism, it may be added, has been mainly directed towards the author’s craftsmanship — his conceptions of the life he was portraying the critic was wise enough to let alone. Mr. Morrison has also been indebted on the side of art in fiction to Mr. Walter Besant, whom he met in the East End.

  Mr. Morrison has been fortunate in his literary experience. He is another witness to the fact that merit makes its way from the outside, without necessarily receiving aid or having influence brought to bear on editors or publishers. It is curious to note that a manuscript of his which happened to be rejected once was accepted on the day following, and now has a place in this book. Some cycling verses contributed as a lad to a cycling magazine began his literary career, and for some years he continued to write on what was then a novel sport. He drifted into broader channels and became a frequent contributor to popular papers and magazines. During this period he was working on the Charity Commission, and wrote only by way of relaxation. About five years ago he resigned his office on the Trust, and, occupying chambers near the Strand, joined the editorial staff of an old-established evening paper, where for some months he continued to write leaderettes and miscellaneous articles and notes until, becoming convinced that he could not do justice to such ability for better work which he might possess amidst the grinding routine of newspaper scribbling, he gave up his post and applied himself to more serious writing, contributing to the “Strand,” and other magazines and reviews. About this time he began the series which is now gathered under the common title “Tales of Mean Streets.” On its recent publication in England it was received with instant recognition as a book of extraordinary merit, and it has met with signal success. Some idea of the strong impression which it has made in England may be gathered from Mr. Arthur Waugh’s warm tribute to the author’s distinction in a recent letter to the “Critic.” “He deals exclusively,” writes Mr. Waugh, “with life in the East End of London, and he does so with a fearlessness and originality which are of more value than many sermons. I do not know whether his book is published in America; but if so, I strongly advise every reader of this letter to secure it. Those who do so will learn from its pages more of the degradation and misery of a certain side of London life than they could in many weeks of philanthropic ‘slumming.’ Mr. Morrison’s will be a name to conjure with in another season.”