the cockney is popularly supposed to stand for the fixed type of the blasphemous and the cynical in his speech and attitude to life. he is supposed to jump with hobnailed boots on all things and institutions that are, to others, sacred. he is supposed to admit no solemnities, no traditional rites or services, to the big moments of life.
this is wrong. the cockney's attitude to life is perhaps more solemn than that of any other social type, save when he is one of a crowd of his fellows; and then arises some primitive desire to mock and destroy. he will say "sir" to people who maintain their carriages or cars in his own district; but on bank holidays, when he visits territories remote from his home, he will roar and chi-ike at the pompous and the rich wherever he sees it.
but the popular theory of the cockney is most effectively exploded when he is seen in a dramatic situation or in some moment of emotional stress. he does not then cry "gorblimey" or [pg 149]"comartovit" or some current persiflage of the day; or stand reticent and monosyllabic, as some superior writers depict him; but, from some atavistic cause, harks back to the speech of forgotten saxon forefathers.
this trick you will find reflected in the melodrama and the cheap serial story that are made for his entertainment. it is hostile to superior opinion, but it is none the less true to say that melodrama does endeavour to reflect life as it is. when the wronged squire says to his erring son: "get you gone; never darken my doors again," he is not talking a particular language of melodrama. he may be a little out of his part as a squire; that is not what a father of long social position and good education would say to a scapegrace son; but it is what an untaught town labourer would say in such a circumstance; and, as these plays are written for him, the writers draw their inspiration from his speech and manners. the programme allure of the duke of bentborough, lord ernest swaddling, lady gwendoline flummery, and so on, is used simply to bring him to the theatre. the scenes he witnesses, and the scenes he pays to witness, show himself banishing his son, himself forgiving his prodigal [pg 150]daughter, with his own attitudes and his own speech. the illiterate do not quote melodrama; melodrama quotes them.
again and again this has been proved in london police-courts. when the emotions are roused, the cockney does not pick his words and alight carefully on something he heard at the theatre last week; nor does he become sullen and abashed. he becomes violently vocal. he speaks out of himself. although he seldom enters a church, the grip of the church is so tightly upon him that you may, as it were, see its knuckles standing in white relief when he speaks of solemn affairs. if you ask him about his sick uncle john, he will not tell you that uncle john is dead, or has "pegged out" or "snuffed it"; such phrases he reserves for reporting the passing of prime ministers, dukes and millionaires. he will tell you that uncle john has "passed away" or "gone home"; that it is a "happy release"; and, between swigs at his beer, he will give you intimate, but carefully veiled, details of his passing. he will never speak of the elementary, universal facts of life without the use of euphemism. a young unmarried mother is always spoken of as having "got into trouble." it is never said[pg 151] that she is about to have a baby; she is "expecting." he never reports that an acquaintance has committed suicide; he has "done away with himself" or "made a hole in the water."
at an inquest on a young girl in the bermondsey district, the mother was asked when last she saw her daughter.
"a'monday. and that was the last time i ever clapped eyes on her, as gawd is my witness."
at another inquest on a hoxton girl, a young railwayman was called as witness. having given his evidence, he suddenly rushed to the body, and bent over it, and cried loudly:—
"oh, my dove, my dear! my little blossom's been plucked away!"
in a police-court maternity case, i heard the following from the mother of the deserted girl, who had lost her case; "ah, god! an' shall this villain escape from his crime scot-free?" and in the early days of the war a bereaved woman created a scene at an evening service in a south london church with this audible prayer: "oh, gawd, take away this day of judgment from the people, fer the sake of thy son jesus. amen."
again, at thames police court, during a case[pg 152] of theft against a boy of seventeen, the father was called, and admitted to turning his son from home when he was fifteen, because of his criminal ways.
"yerce, i did send 'im orf. an' never shall 'is foot cross my threshold until 'e's mended 'is evil ways."
the same reversion to passionate language may be found in many of the unreported incidents of battle. i have heard of cockneys, whose pals were killed at their side, and of their comment on the affair in the stress of the moment:—
"old george! i loved old george better'n i loved anything in the world. i'd 'ave give my 'eart's blood fer george."
and the cry of a mother at the old bailey, when her son was sentenced to death:—
"oh, take me. take my old grey 'airs. let me die in 'is stead."—
and here is the extraordinary statement of a girl of fourteen, who, tired of factory hours and home, ran away for a few days, and then would not go back for fear of being whipped by her father. at the end of her holiday she gave herself up to the police on the other side of london[pg 153] from her home, and this was her statement to them:—
"why can't i go where i want to? i don't do anybody any harm. i knew the world was good. i got tired of all the monotony, an' the same old thing every day, an' i wanted to get out. i am. why bother me? i wonder why i can't go out and do as i like, so long as i don't do no harm. i thought the world was so big an' good, but in reality living in it is like being in a cage. you can't do nothing in this world unless somebody else consents."
strange wisdom from a child of fourteen, spoken in moments of terror before uniformed policemen in that last fear of the respectable—the police-station. but it is in such official places that the cockney loses the part he is for ever playing—though, like most of us, he is playing it unconsciously—and becomes something strangely lifted from the airy, confident materialist of his common moments. the educated man, on the other hand, brought into court or into other dramatic surroundings, ceases to be himself and begins to act. the cockney, normally without dignity, achieves it in dramatic moments, where[pg 154] the man of position and dignity usually crumbles away to rubbish or ineptitude.
hence, only the wide-eyed writers of melodrama have successfully produced the cockney on the stage. true, they dress him in evening clothes, and surround him with impossible butlers and footmen, but if you want to probe the cockney's soul, and cannot probe it at first-hand, it is to melodrama and the cheap serial that you must turn; not to the slum stories of novelists who live in kensington or to the "low-life" plays of condescending dramatists.
