Once upon a time, as we say in English, or olim, as the Latins said in their more austere and briefer way, I was sent forth on a May Monday to watch London being happy on their Whitsun holiday.* This is the sort of appointment that used to be known in newspaper offices as an annual; and the difficulty for the men engaged in this business is to avoid seeing the same sights as those witnessed a year before and saying much the same things about them as were said on Whit-Monday twelvemonth. Queuing up for Madame Tussaud’s waxworks,* giving buns to diverse creatures in the Zoo,* gazing at those Easter Island gods* in the portico of the British Museum, waiting for all sorts of early doors to open; all these are spectacles of the day. And the patient man who boards the buses from suburbs may chance to hear a lady from Hornsey expounding to her neighbour on the seat, an inhabitant of Enfield Wash, the terrible gaieties that Piccadilly Circus witnesses when the electric signs are fairly lit.
On the Whit-Monday in question, I saw and recorded some of these matters; and then strolled westward along Piccadilly, by the palings of the Green Park. The conventional business of the day had been more or less attended to: now for the unsystematic prowl: one never knows where one may find one’s goods. And then and there, I came across some boys, half-a dozen or so of them, playing what struck me as a very queer game on the fresh turf of the Park, under the tender and piercing green of the young leaves. I have forgotten the preliminary elaborations of the sport; but there seemed to be some sort of dramatic action, perhaps with dialogue, but this I could not hear. Then one boy stood alone, with the five or six others about him. They pretended to hit the solitary boy, and he fell to the ground and lay motionless, as if dead. Then the others covered him up with their coats, and ran away. And then, if I remember, the boy who had been ritually smitten, slaughtered, and buried, rose to his feet, and the very odd game began all over again.
Here, I thought, was something a little out of the way of the accustomed doings and pleasures of the holiday crowds, and I returned to my office and embodied an account of this Green Park sport in my tale of Whit-Monday in London; with some allusion to the curious analogy between the boys’ game and certain matters of a more serious nature. But it would not do. A spectacled Reader* came down out of his glass cage, and held up a strip of proof.
‘Hiram Abiff?’ he queried in a low voice, as he placed the galley-slip on my desk, and pointed to the words with his pen. ‘It’s not usual to mention these things in print.’
I assured the Reader that I was not one of the Widow’s offspring,* but he still shook his head gravely, and I let him have his way, willing to avoid all admiratio.* It was, I thought, a curious little incident, and to this day I have never heard an explanation of the coincidence — mere chance, very likely — between the pastime in the Park and those matters which it is not usual to mention in print.
But a good many years later, this business of the Green Park was recalled to me by a stranger experience in a very different part of London. A friend of mine, an American, who had travelled in many outland territories of the earth, asked me to show him some of the less known quarters of London.
‘Do not misunderstand me, sir,’ he said, in his measured, almost Johnsonian manner,* ‘I do not wish to see your great city in its alleged sensational aspects. I am not yearning to probe the London underworld, nor do I wish to view any opium joints or blind-pigs* for cocaine addicts. In such matters, I have already accumulated more than sufficient experience in other quarters of the world. But if you would just shew me those aspects which are so ordinary that nobody ever sees them, I shall be greatly indebted to you.’
I remembered how I had once awed two fellow-citizens of his by taking them to a street not very far from King’s Cross Station, and shewing them how each house was guarded by twin plaster sphinxes of a deadly chocolate-red, which crouched on either side of the flights of steps leading to the doorways. I remembered how the late Arnold Bennett* had come exploring in this region, and seen the sphinxes and had noted them in his diary with a kind of dumb surmise, venturing no comment. So I said that I thought I understood. We set out, and soon we were deep in that unknown London which is at our very doors.
‘Dickens had been here,’ I said in my part as Guide and Interpreter. ‘You know “Little Dorrit”? Then this might be Mr Casby’s very street,* which set out meaning to run down into the valley and up again to the top of the hill, but got out of breath and stopped still after twenty yards.’
The American gentleman relished the reference and his surroundings. He pointed out to me curious work in some of the iron balconies before the first floor windows in the grey houses, making a rough sketch of the design of one of them in his note-book. We wandered here and there, and up and down at haphazard, by strange wastes and devious ways, till I, in spite of my fancied knowledge, found myself in a part that I did not remember to have seen before. There were timber yards with high walls about them. There were cottages that seemed to have strayed from the outskirts of some quiet provincial town, off the main road. One of these lay deep in the shadow of an old mulberry, and ripening grapes hung from a vine on a neighbouring wall. The hollyhocks in the neat little front gardens were almost over; there were still brave displays of snapdragons and marigolds. But round the corner, barrows piled with pale bananas and flaming oranges filled the roadway, and the street market resounded with raucous voices, praise of fruit and fish, and loud bargainings, and gossip at its highest pitch. We pushed our way through the crowd, and left the street of the market, and presently came into the ghostly quiet of a square: high, severe houses, built of whitish bricks, complete in 1840 Gothic, all neat and well-kept, and for all sign of life or movement, uninhabited.
And then, when we had barely rested our ears from the market jangle, there came what I suppose was an overflow from that region. A gang of small boys surged into the square and broke its peace. There were about a dozen of them, more or less, and I took it that they were playing soldiers. They marched, two and two, in their dirty and shabby order, apparently under the command of a young ruffian somewhat bigger and taller than the rest. Two of them banged incessantly with bits of broken wood on an old meat tin and a battered iron tea tray, and all of them howled as barbarously as any crooner, but much louder. They went about and about, and then diverged into an empty road that looked as if it led nowhere in particular, and there drew up, and formed themselves into a sort of hollow square, their captain in the middle. The tin pan music went on steadily, but less noisily; it had become a succession of slow beats, and the howls had turned into a sort of whining chant.
But it remained a very horrible row, and I was moving on to get away from the noise, when my American interposed.
‘If you wouldn’t mind our tarrying here for a few moments,’ he said apologetically. ‘This pastime of your London boys interests me very much. You may think it strange, but I find it more essentially exciting than the Eton and Harrow Cricket Match* of which I witnessed some part a few weeks ago.’
So we looked on from an unobtrusive corner. The boys, evidently, agreed with my friend, and found their game absorbing. I don’t think that they had noticed us or knew that we were there.
They went through their queer performance. The bangs or beats on the tin and the tray grew softer and slower, and the yells had died into a monotonous drone. The leader went inside the square, from boy to boy, and seemed to whisper into the ear of each one. Then he passed round a second time, standing before each, and making a sort of summoning or beckoning gesture with his hand. Nothing happened. I did not find the sport essentially exciting; but looking at the American, I observed that he was watching it with an expression of the most acute interest and amazement. Again the big boy went about the square. He stopped dead before a little fellow in a torn jacket. He threw out his arms wide, with a gesture of embrace, and then drew them in. He did this three times, and at the third repetition of the ceremony, the little chap in the torn jacket cried out with a piercing scream and fell forward as if dead.
The banging of the tins and the howl of the voices went up to heaven with a hideous dissonance.
My American friend was gasping with astonishment as we passed on our way.
‘This is an amazing city,’ he said. ‘Do you know, sir, that those boys were acting all as if they’d been Asiki doing their Njoru ritual.* I’ve seen it in East Africa. But there the black man that falls down stays down. He’s dead.’
A week or two later, I was telling the tale to some friends. One of them pulled an evening paper out of his pocket.
‘Look at that,’ said he, pointing with his finger. I read the headlines:
mystery death in north london square
home office doctor puzzled
heart vessels ruptured
‘playing soldiers’
boy falls dead
coroner directs open verdict