Nineteen Impressions/The Lost Suburb
THE LOST SUBURB
SO brilliant a memory must surely be that of a thing seen, and seen in a moment of tense emotion. Other memories of childhood are almost equally clear; little, bright pictures that present themselves without mental effort and awaken curious happiness for which I cannot account. In all these memories there is a sense of unreal reality that has a quality of ecstasy; I do so very truly live in those scenes, yet my body is apart from them; I am there unhampered by any weight of flesh. I can experience, but I am free. This past is new to me as no common sight or feeling of hitherto unknown life is ever new; unless it comes strangely, as a thing remembered.
The great difference between this and other memories is that this one I cannot place. The others, I know, are certainly of scenes and acts in which I played long ago. In the almost unbroken monotony of the long reasoning hours, when the dull machinery of the mind works with its usual recognition of faint or laboured effort, I can recall the plain, stupid facts. I know what took place before and after those scenes; I could write their history,—the kind of history that is written; what people said or did, what they wore or how they looked. There is no ecstasy in that, only the repulsiveness of facts, and again facts, and of a landscape or a human being reasonably analysed.
And to such commonplaces I, too, must descend in order to set out the story of my unplaced memory—that story which I cherish as a record of my soul's experience, however banal. Not that this apparent, superficial banality is of the least account. The glorious truth for me is in the knowledge that I have trespassed among the mysteries of the outer world, that I have crept through the interstices of matter and walked in the spaceless, timeless present of the universe. My soul has returned to me and said, "I am thyself."
All this is proof to me and will be proof to none but me, but I put forward my three phases in order, ranging them in succession, at once chronological and logically sequential. So I come by way of memory and dream to the bald evidence of what we call reality.
I
MEMORY
It is so slight a thing, and yet to me so full of an inexplicable joy. I must have been absurdly young, so young that only this one emotional picture impressed me, and all the business of movement, purpose, and sequence of life that should circumscribe the vision is forgotten.
I was looking out from a moving window, and reason tells me that it was probably the window of a four-wheeled cab. My mother was frightened to death of hansoms.
I think it must have been my first visit to London, though no record of such a visit remains, and doubtless my childish mind was thrilled with the joy of adventure into the untraversed mysteries of the suburbs about the great city. Yet one wonders why the things that must have appeared so bizarre to me have been forgotten; the first impression of streets and traffic, of great shop-windows, or the vastness of titanic buildings, while this one scene, less unfamiliar, should be so vividly remembered.
It may be that my exhilaration had reached some climax, and that for a moment I was one with life; or it may be that that spot held some definite relation to myself, a relation imperfectly traced, which cannot be explained.
I hesitate on the verge of attempted description, knowing the inner joy to be indescribable. To me the old magic returns, but the place to all others must appear as a hundred other places.
I saw the right side of the road more clearly, but I must have danced across the floor of the cab and seen a little of the left side, for I know something of that also, though less definitely. We were on the slope of a hill, and the houses on the right side stood above the level of the road. I could see little of the houses, however, for at the foot of their gardens was planted a thick row of balsam poplars—strong, healthy trees that were just come to full leaf and filled the air with their heavy-sweet perfume. The dusk was falling, and under the trees the shadows were so heavy that I could see nothing but the flicker of some white gate here and there. Then there was a break in the poplars. For ten yards, perhaps, came a low brick wall, coped with thin stone, and crowned with a poor iron rail carried on low cast-iron standards set far apart. The standards were cast in an ornamental shape, capped by a fleur-de-lys or some other misconception of the Early Victorian founders. A broken shrubbery of variegated laurel pushed discoloured leaves over and through the ironwork. The house I hardly saw; only one fact remains, it was chocolate-coloured. Perhaps I conceived that it was certainly built of chocolate. Then we were passing the poplars again, the heavily fragrant poplars that threw such deep shadows.
On the other side was a great wood, shut away from all discovery by a cliff of black fence incredibly high—higher than the roof of our monumental cab—and defended at the top by a row of vicious little crooked spikes, like capital T's with one arm broken away. In one place a pear-shaped branch of lilac overhung the fence. And all my memory of the picture goes to the sound of the crunch of new gravel and the rattling of a loose window.
That is all; little enough, and filled with no more of romance than can be found in any other new suburb, spreading out to encroach later on the old estate which fronted and repelled it on the left side of my road. But to me it has some special quality that mountain, cliff, or sea can never hold; and when, probably twenty years later, I came to live in London, I set myself to find that spot which had left so deep an impression on me.
I was tireless in those days, and I explored the suburbs from Catford to Barnet, from Leytonstone to Putney. Innumerable summer evenings I have spent in wandering happily through the wilderness of streets, bright and dull, that encircle the gloom of the essential London. And always as I went I was on the verge of the great discovery; the great hope was ever present with me that at the next turning I might find again my wonderland.
II
DREAM
In another twenty years I had failed to find it, and then for the first time my soul went there in a dream.
The dream began with confusion and foolishness. I was making my way, absurdly, through houses and enclosed places, passing through rooms full of people, down passages, across yards and over walls, seeking some plain, open street where I might walk unharassed by fears of intrusion and trespass. Quite suddenly I found myself flying; and then, the confusion vanished, the dream steadied, I came into reality.
I was walking in a familiar place, under the shadow of balsam poplars—the bright new flags of the pavement were sticky in places with the varnish of spilled gum from the trees, and daintily littered with shed catkins. The road was spotlessly neat, as a toy road, its red gravel freshly rolled and unmarked by a single wheel-track. Across the way a high tarred fence ran unbroken up the hill, and behind the fence were tall forest trees, elm, oak, and beech, their little newly-green leaves in brilliant contrast with the blackness of an occasional fir.
A familiar place indeed to me; but in my dream I had no recollection of my childish visit. My associations were older than that.
Thus I came by unrealised steps to the break in the poplars.
The house that lay back behind the waist-high wall, with its useless iron railing, was grotesquely out of place. On either side of it were detached suburban villas, big, high-shouldered houses of red brick with stone dressings and plain stone string-courses—"blood and bandages" we used to call the style in my architectural days.
The house behind the dwarf wall was an anachronism, a square box, flat-roofed and stumpy; and some fool had painted its stuccoed straightness a dark chocolate. The plainness of its dingy front was relieved only by the projection of a porch, equally dour and squat, with two dumpy, bulging columns supporting a weak entablature; some horrible Georgian conception of the Doric order. All the face of that stucco box was leprous as the trunk of a plane-tree, the little bow-legged columns were nearly bare.
The scrubby patch of grass and dandelions—hardly distinguishable from the weed-covered path—that lay between me and the house, contrasted no less sharply with the smooth lawns and bright flower-beds of its neighbours.
The road ran in a curve, the gardens tapered back from the pavement, the face of every house was set parallel with the tangent; and it seemed as if those ambitious villas on either hand turned a contemptuous shoulder to this square-browed little anachronism.
Square-browed and sulky it was, ashamed yet obstinately defiant, staring a resolute-eyed challenge at the prim ostentation of that smooth road of red gravel.
I was glad for the little house.
The road was deserted, the whole place silent as if one looked at the pictured thing rather than walked among the substance. But I was expecting someone, and presently he came, slinking furtive and apologetic from under the shadow of the scented poplars.
He wore a top-hat that showed in its weakest places a foundation of cardboard. His rusty frock-coat fitted him like a jersey, and the thick-soled boots below the fringe of his too-short grey trousers were the boots of a workman.
He nodded to me with a jerk of his head as he came out into the daylight, and fumbled with one dirty hand at his untidy beard.
"Still 'ere," he remarked. "We're clean forgot, that's what we are."
"No one comes along this road!" I said.
"Not with all the big 'ouses frontin' the other way," he added.
It was true. I had not noticed that, or I had forgotten it. One only saw the backs of those high-shouldered villas, ornamented though they were to turn some kind of a face to either road. Only my little house showed a front to this bright new gravel and the tall trees of the boarded estate.
And as the shabby man spoke to me, I heard for the first time a sound, very thin and far away, that came from the other side of the houses, the delicate, distant ring of voices and the tinkle of tiny laughter—but so remote, so infinitely removed from us.
"'E's still alive," continued the shabby man, pointing to the chocolate house. "I seen 'im a few days since—lookin' out o' window 'e was. …"
Again my mind took up the idea submitted. I could recover nothing for myself, but every least suggestion enabled me to gather up again some lost thread.
He was still alive, the figure of mystery and terror, fit occupant for that strange house. Yet I had never been afraid of that apparition which apeared sometimes at the window, the man who wore some repulsive, disfiguring mask across his face. I had had confidence in him. But if I felt thus, why did I call him a figure of terror? I listened again to the shabby man. He had been rambling on while my thoughts were building.
He said something about the "children always peerin' and pryin' up the lane. …"
I smiled, and turned slightly away from him. I saw them coming now. The road was waking slowly to life. I saw a little huddled group, the familiar group of children coming slowly towards us, keeping close under the shadow of the poplars. A little girl of nine or ten was playing mother to them, keeping them back, spreading out her skirts, like a little hen to guard her inquisitive, peeping chickens. She wore sandals, and little frilled white trousers that came down to her ankles. As they drew timorously nearer, creeping along the palings inch by inch, I could hear their sibilant whisperings, little cluckings and chirps of laughter, and half-smothered cries of affected terror.
Ah! to them he had been a figure of terror, though they could not restrain their curiosity, and, after all, they were safe. No one had ever known him to come out of the house.
As I watched the children, now drawing so near to us, I was on the verge of apprehension. Surely I knew that tall, thin child. I stared, and as I stared she and the others faded, and slipped from my comprehension. I knew they were still there, but I could no longer see or hear them. The whole scene about me had grown suddenly stiff and artificial, frozen and soundless; I had a sense of unreality and doubt. For one moment I fancied that I was flying again, and then I heard the thin, whining voice of the little shabby man, and came back to intensest realisation of my surroundings. The children had gone, but I could hear once more the tinkle of voices and little laughter beyond the houses.
"Over fifteen year, now, since he first come …" the little man was saying.
I had heard someone say that before. The memory of it was associated quite distinctly with the smell of the balsam poplars. But I dared not attempt to recall the circumstances. The shock I had just received had left me with the knowledge of my double consciousness. I must remain placid in the sense of my happiness; any effort of mind or conscious stimulation of idea would drag me back to my other life. I looked down at the pavement and gently rolled a green catkin to and fro under my foot. I listened attentively once more to the garrulous little man. I understood that he was glad to have someone to talk to. This was a lonely, unused road.
"… 'Aven't seen the little chap for the past day or two," he rambled on; "laid up again very like. …"
My heart leapt, and I repeated to myself, "calm, tranquil happiness." I rolled the catkin backwards and forwards under my foot. I knew of whom he was speaking now, and for an instant I had the sense of looking up to the face of the little man before me—I, who was nearly a foot taller than he.
"Very delicate," I suggested.
The little man shook his head sadly. "Can't live," he said, paused, and then repeated with morbid enjoyment, "Can't live. 'E's got the look."
I could not compose myself. The struggle had begun again, the effort to recall the past. I looked down at the catkin I had released, and saw that my leg was bare and that I had on my foot a white sock and a black, round-toed slipper; across the instep was a strap that fastened with a little round black button. I looked up quickly, and the shabby man had vanished. I was not afraid, but I was desperately eager to stay where I was. I reached up and grasped the iron rail on the low wall. I had to stand on tiptoe to reach the rail, and even as I grasped it, it rose high in the air, carrying me with it. I swung at giddy heights, and once looking down, I saw that the whole sky was ablaze with sunset. I could not bear to look down into that hot flame, and swung over on my back, still holding tight to the rail. Something was remorselessly calling me out of the depths of time, and I began to fall through enormous spaces. Gradually I lost all sense of movement. I was lying on my back staring at some huge white expanse. My arms were still above my head, gripping the iron rail that crowned the wall of the chocolate house. I was, in fact, in bed staring at the ceiling, and the rail was the rail of my bed. I knew that I had been lying intensely still. Even now I could not move.
The door opened, and an untidy head was pushed in.
"I've called yer three times a'ready," said the lodging-house servant. "It's past nine o'clock."
III
REALITY
I did not go to the office that morning. I was too excited and too contemptuous of the meanness of life. I had had transcendental experience. I was exalted, superbly stirred and proud.
The glamour of that wonderful vision was still upon me, and I went out to find my lost suburb. I knew that I should find it that morning.
And to me, as I have said, the evidence is convincing, despite certain annoying discrepancies which must, inevitably, I am afraid, induce doubt in other minds.
It was in south-west London, but I shall not indicate the precise locality. What use is it for people to go and stare at the outside of commonplace houses, as if some murder had been committed or some ghost seen there?
Even I had no thrill when I found the place; it was all so changed. The estate behind the tall black fence has all been cut up into trim streets of villas, of meaner pretension than that one crescent of comparatively large houses, which, by the way, are not letting well, although they are not nearly so large and imposing as I had imagined. The chocolate house has disappeared, but I can mark the place where it stood, because there is one house in the crescent which is narrower and smaller than the others. It matches the others in style and faces the same way, turning its white-streaked back to the meaner villas on the estate, but it has no poplars in its garden. The other poplars, however, were disappointing. They were thinner, many of them have died, no doubt; and those that remain have been pollarded and formalised. Moreover, it was late summer when I went, and they had lost their fragrance.
I shall not go there again; my suburb is lost, now, for ever.
If this were all, I should have a poor case, I admit; but I have better evidence than this, although there is some confusion of time which I cannot explain.
I had little difficulty in finding the house-agents, their boards leaned disreputably over many of the palings, thrusting their statements of eligibility at the road.
The young man in the spruce, bare office, however, was no use to me directly. His memory carried him back no further than a paltry three years, and his firm had only been established for seven.
He offered me keys and orders to view, and plainly regarded me with suspicion when I told him that I wanted to find out when one of the houses in the crescent was built.
"All modern requirements," he said, "bath, hot water …"
"But surely," I interrupted him, "the houses in the crescent are not quite modern. They must have been there," I hesitated and then plunged, "at least seventy years." I thought of the little girl in the Early Victorian trousers and sandals.
The clerk pursed his mouth and shook his head. "Well, I can't say for certain," he said, "but I shouldn't think they'd been up as long as that. Anyway, they're all fitted with bath-rooms now, hot water upstairs, and every …"
"I don't want to take a house," I protested. "I'm sorry if I'm wasting your time, but I have a particular interest in one house, 'The Limes,' I think you called it. I—I—knew someone who lived there once."
"Sorry I can't be of any assistance," returned the clerk coldly. He had plainly lost any interest in me, and he had never had much.
But as I turned to go out of the office he became human for a moment. "You're sure you don't want to take a house in the crescent?" he asked. "The Limes," it seemed, was not to be let.
"Quite sure," I said convincingly.
He hesitated, and then said: "Because if it's only information you want, there's old Hankin in the High Street, No. 69, a rival firm, of course, and if you were thinking of taking a house, you'd better come to us, but …"
I thanked him, and hurried away to find old Hankin.
His office was a small and dingy place, and old Hankin was a man of fifty-five or so; he wore a grey beard and spectacles. He was evidently not busy, but he regarded me with the professional distrust of the house-agent. I had some difficulty in breaking through his suspicion of the potential leaseholder.
"'The Limes,'" he said at last, looking at me over his spectacles, "was built about thirty years ago, just before I came into the business."
"You don't remember the house that stood there before?" I asked.
He pinched up his under lip between his finger and thumb, and continued to regard me very earnestly above his spectacles. "Making inquiries?" he asked, and his tone gave the phrase a technical savour.
"Only on my own behalf," I said. "I have heard rather a curious story of the place." I wished I could tell him the truth, but it was impossible. He, most assuredly, would never have believed me; so unreal is the world of fact.
He dropped quite unexpectedly into the confidential. "You see," he said, "I left 'ome when I was fifteen—ran away to sea." The ghost of a smile came into his eyes at the amazing thought that once he, old Hankin, the house-agent, had run away to sea.
I curbed my impatience—it was the only way. I allowed him to ramble on, pricking him with assumed interest and an occasional question, till I brought him home, at the age of twenty-seven, to a forgiving father in the house and estate agency business.
"And I suppose your father would remember the old house that stood in the crescent before 'The Limes' was built?" I prompted him.
He nodded. "He had some story about that 'ouse, if I remember right," said old Hankin.
I waited, breathless.
"It was an old 'ouse as was burnt down," he went on, "but the story was about some queer customer as used to live there, back in the 'forties—before I was born, that was." He took off his spectacles and made a business of wiping them and peering at the glasses.
I looked my interest.
"I dunno whether the old man dreamt it or not, but he used to tell as the occupier was a hermit or a miser or what not, and was wanted for some old debt. Shut hisself up in the 'ouse, so the old man used to say, and never put his 'ead out o' doors by daylight for fear of distraint. Free'old, the 'ouse was. There wasn't no road at the back then—what's now the front, of course—and only the lane, Granger's Lane, on the other side. The 'ouses in the crescent was built in 'seventy-nine."
"You're sure of that?" I asked.
He nodded. "We got the plans in the office somewhere," he said, and looked round at the muddle about him a little helplessly.
"Never mind the plans," I soothed him. "Was there any more about that miser in the old house?"
He wrinkled his forehead. "There was something amusin' about him," he answered, "but I forget the rights of it. To the best o' my recollection, the old debt as I was referring to had been given up long ago by the creditors, but there was some old bailiff or debt collector who'd been offered a commission on recovery, and he was the only one who remembered it. Used to hang about the place in the evenin's sometimes after his ordinary work. Something o' that kind. The old man used to make a story of it, I know, but 'e's been dead this twenty year."
That was all I could get out of old Hankin, and so far I have not been able to corroborate a single other detail.
••••••
Now that all the essential facts have been put on paper, I am moved by a sense of impatience. I lived for a time on such a high plane of emotion, I was so sure that inspiration had been given to me; but now, as I examine the evidence, coldly and reasonably, a doubt insinuates itself, some reflex of the doubt that I anticipated in other minds before I began to write.
There was certainly some confusion of time in my dream. Those large villas were not built, nor the ground cleared when that odd little speculating bailiff used to take his evening patrol in the hope of one day being able to serve the writ he doubtless carried in the breast-pocket of that tightly-fitting frock-coat. They were not built when those children crept, giggling and half-scared, under the shadow of the poplars, nor when that one little boy, who was not afraid and who was so sure to die, walked—who knows?—into the very garden, perhaps even into the house itself. That thought sets me trembling with wonder and eagerness again. If I could but dream once more, and remember if I was ever inside the house …
I grant the confusion, but on that plane of being, after all, time is not, and my own childish vision of the place in this life—the houses were newly-built then—may have created on that other plane a setting which, according to our measure, was an anachronism.
One further point I am very loath to cede: the question of my fragrant poplars. According to Aiton, P. balsamifera was introduced into England at the end of the seventeenth century, and it is now commonly grown in suburbs; but is it likely to have been found on waste ground in 1840? I can only say that it is not impossible. I do not know that there may not have been older houses fronting Granger's Lane, before the villas came.
I end where I began by saying that the memory, the dream, and my subsequent investigations are evidence to me, if they carry no weight with others. The vision has come to me and left me changed. I have touched a higher plane of being, and all my old materialistic doubts are gone, never to return. This one thing I have learned, and to that I shall always be able to hold: Reality lies within ourselves, not in the things about us.
1912.