The People of the Abyss Page #6

"The People of the Abyss" by Jack London, published in 1903, is a work of investigative journalism in which London documents the extreme poverty and harsh living conditions in the East End of London during the early 20th century.

• Journals
• Non-Fiction

								

disconsolately at the muddy water. A fireman’s cap was pulled down
across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered
unmistakably of the sea.

“Hello, mate,” I greeted him, sparring for a beginning. “Can you tell
me the way to Wapping?”

“Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?” he countered, fixing my
nationality on the instant.

And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a
public-house and a couple of pints of “arf an’ arf.” This led to closer
intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling’s worth of
coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a bed, and
sixpence for more arf an’ arf, he generously proposed that we drink up
the whole shilling.

“My mate, ’e cut up rough las’ night,” he explained. “An’ the bobbies
got ’m, so you can bunk in wi’ me. Wotcher say?”

I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole
shilling’s worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in a
miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was. And that in
one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower-class
London workman, my later experience substantiates.

He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him. As a
child, his home was the streets and the docks. He had never learned to
read, and had never felt the need for it—a vain and useless
accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station in life.

He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all
crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular
food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never
went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his
own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a
trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and
then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.

And in the course of this he had also hammered out a philosophy of
life, an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical and
sensible one from his point of view. When I asked him what he lived
for, he immediately answered, “Booze.” A voyage to sea (for a man must
live and get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and the big
drunk at the end. After that, haphazard little drunks, sponged in the
“pubs” from mates with a few coppers left, like myself, and when
sponging was played out another trip to sea and a repetition of the
beastly cycle.

“But women,” I suggested, when he had finished proclaiming booze the
sole end of existence.

“Wimmen!” He thumped his pot upon the bar and orated eloquently.
“Wimmen is a thing my edication ’as learnt me t’ let alone. It don’t
pay, matey; it don’t pay. Wot’s a man like me want o’ wimmen, eh? jest
you tell me. There was my mar, she was enough, a-bangin’ the kids about
an’ makin’ the ole man mis’rable when ’e come ’ome, w’ich was seldom, I
grant. An’ fer w’y? Becos o’ mar! She didn’t make ’is ’ome ’appy, that
was w’y. Then, there’s the other wimmen, ’ow do they treat a pore
stoker with a few shillin’s in ’is trouseys? A good drunk is wot ’e’s
got in ’is pockits, a good long drunk, an’ the wimmen skin ’im out of
his money so quick ’e ain’t ’ad ’ardly a glass. I know. I’ve ’ad my
fling, an’ I know wot’s wot. An’ I tell you, where’s wimmen is
trouble—screechin’ an’ carryin’ on, fightin’, cuttin’, bobbies,
magistrates, an’ a month’s ’ard labour back of it all, an’ no pay-day
when you come out.”

“But a wife and children,” I insisted. “A home of your own, and all
that. Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on your
knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when she lays
the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they go to bed,
and the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of where you’ve
been and what you’ve seen, and of her and all the little happenings at
home while you’ve been away, and—”

“Garn!” he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder.
“Wot’s yer game, eh? A missus kissin’ an’ kids clim’in’, an’ kettle
singin’, all on four poun’ ten a month w’en you ’ave a ship, an’ four
nothin’ w’en you ’aven’t. I’ll tell you wot I’d get on four poun’ ten—a
missus rowin’, kids squallin’, no coal t’ make the kettle sing, an’ the
kettle up the spout, that’s wot I’d get. Enough t’ make a bloke
bloomin’ well glad to be back t’ sea. A missus! Wot for? T’ make you
mis’rable? Kids? Jest take my counsel, matey, an’ don’t ’ave ’em. Look
at me! I can ’ave my beer w’en I like, an’ no blessed missus an’ kids
a-crying for bread. I’m ’appy, I am, with my beer an’ mates like you,
an’ a good ship comin’, an’ another trip to sea. So I say, let’s ’ave
another pint. Arf an’ arf’s good enough for me.”

Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of
two-and-twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of
life and the underlying economic reason for it. Home life he had never
known. The word “home” aroused nothing but unpleasant associations. In
the low wages of his father, and of other men in the same walk in life,
he found sufficient reason for branding wife and children as
encumbrances and causes of masculine misery. An unconscious hedonist,
utterly unmoral and materialistic, he sought the greatest possible
happiness for himself, and found it in drink.

A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker’s
work; the gutter or the workhouse; and the end—he saw it all as clearly
as I, but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of his birth, all
the forces of his environment had tended to harden him, and he viewed
his wretched, inevitable future with a callousness and unconcern I
could not shake.

And yet he was not a bad man. He was not inherently vicious and brutal.
He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique. His eyes
were blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart. And there
was a laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind. The brow and general
features were good, the mouth and lips sweet, though already developing
a harsh twist. The chin was weak, but not too weak; I have seen men
sitting in the high places with weaker.

His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect
neck that I was not surprised by his body that night when he stripped
for bed. I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training
quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one
who stripped to better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty,
this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and
to pass hence without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was
his to bequeath.

It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to confess
that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in London Town.
Just as the scene-shifter was happier in making both ends meet in a

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