I went to the inevitable policeman and asked if he could tell me of a lodging house.
“There’s one in Belvedere Road, over the Bridge and turn to the right,” he told me, and I set off on my tramp.
There is always something to discover in the land of the homeless. You learn quite a lot about streets which invariably escape your notice in ordinary life. Belvedere Road seemed to me one of the longest in London; it is full of many and curious depositories. I passed the office of the State of India tucked in between a beer-house and something to do with deep sea fisheries. Large and imposing brass plates recorded the names of obscure Government departments, hoary with age and decrepitude.
There were not many people in the road that night, and those that I passed were respectably dressed and seemed to be hurrying home to a nice supper. When I had almost given up hope of its discovery I chanced on the lodging house.
A large, austere-looking building, the exterior did not discourage me—I was prepared to scale any physical barriers to get a bed. It was the chill of the spirit that held me back. The lodging house was under the auspices of the Church Army, and this paralysed my will. I ought, of course, to have applied for admission, when I might have chanced on a more kindly reception. It was, I admit, a piece of moral cowardice to turn away from a door, but my state of mind was very raw, my emotions had been badly twisted. Something told me I should be refused for the second time, and it is too much to ask of even destitute humanity to be twice crucified on the same cross.
So I went off again on the tramp, making instinctively for a policeman.
“There’s a place where you may get put up somewhere near Southwark, in the neighbourhood of Union Street, I think.”
It was a cross-country journey, which you could not break by omnibus or tram; but I did not mind, for by this time the fascination of the streets had got me. There are two or three processes which you go through when you are homeless. At first when you have walked about for two or three hours you get very tired. Your head aches and your limbs are like lead; the fact that you have no fixed objective is like a pall on your spirits—you urge yourself forward on mere will. But if you keep on for another hour, or two, or three, your pains vanish—in some strange way you forget cold, hunger and thirst. Your brain is light, your feet move on air. The noises of the street form a monotonous accompaniment which gradually merges into silence; you see little, hear less, feel not at all. Trouble and regret fall from you—it is as though you were doped. You have no sense of distance or time, and gradually your movements become automatic. Instinctively you adopt the slouch of the tramp; you feel yourself one with the streets; you have lost your entity.
I walked through many ages, as it seemed to me, until I chanced upon the place described by the policeman. By this time it was very late, and as it was Saturday, lodgings for the night were difficult to get. If you keep your eyes open on a Sunday morning you will find there are not many homeless creatures in the streets. Everyone, however desolate, makes a push to get put up, somehow or other, for the seventh day. For this reason the lodging house was full, but the management was very kind. The superintendent saw that I was done, and asked me if I would like to rest by the fire in the kitchen—the same communal kitchen which sheltered me in many parts of London.
I was too tired to observe very closely, and with the understanding and good manners you always find among the destitute, I was not pestered with talk. I just sat by the fireside, feeling sorry for myself and all the rest. (This house is run by the Christian Herald Mission, and I found them very Christian. I visited the place later, and in due course shall have something to say on this count. But this story of my first night in the streets must not be broken in its continuity.) Very soon I went on the tramp again.
I could, I am sure, have sat there longer, but if you rest for more than a few minutes you get stiff, not only in body, but in mind, and the “doping” process I have mentioned, has to be gone through all over again. I explored many of the broad streets and fine roads of the district and gradually worked back to Blackfriars. It was past midnight, but near the Ring there was still a flaring whelk-stall round which some night birds were eating. There were no women among them. Women are not welcome at any kind of stall; indeed many coffee stall keepers will not serve you if you are alone, and even when you can persuade the proprietor to let you buy a cup of tea his manner is uncivil, even abusive. The most abject specimen of man is quite welcome if he has the pence to pay for his refreshment. But in the case of women there is the rooted belief that they must be bad lots or they would have a home; if they are not thieves they are prostitutes, and either way, even a commercial connection with them might cause trouble with the police.
When I hear eloquent and educated women declaim on the platforms as to the wrong done to our sex by some inequality of the law that gives the
