yokohama—a japanese family—pretty sarawana—a tea-house festival—a geisha orchestra—sun worship—stowaways in the stokehold—reflections—the kind skipper
i stayed in sydney for a few weeks and finally got on a japanese ship, the maru, and eventually arrived at yokohama. i had never been to japan before, and after tea i hurried ashore. on the wharf stood rows of japanese low-caste women, dressed like guys. they had black teeth, and faces that looked as though they were carved out of yellow wood, and voices that went “honk-ki-hong-ki-ko koo ko,” as though they had an orange in their throats. their toes turned inward and their eyes outward, and japanese flies built their hives in their thick, matted hair. it was hot, muggy weather. i was very disappointed at first, but when i got up into the city and found myself walking among crowds of fascinating japanese people, all jabbering and shuffling along in clogs, i became interested. i had some dim expectation of seeing bamboo dwellings and oriental fairyland trees, with japanese lanterns hanging on them. instead of which i saw fine buildings, well-lit streets and beautiful parks with lakes in them, surrounded by maple and cherry-trees. boats were being paddled on the lake by japanese girls dressed in pale blue kimonos and with hibiscus and cherry blossom in their hair. you can never forget that you are in japan because of the strange language that hums in your ears as you pass along, dreaming you hear the sandalled, shuffling feet of some old ghostly assyrian city and the hubbub of the population talking across the silent ages.
next day i went to tokio; it was only a few miles away, about twenty, i think. there i saw real old japan, and went off into the oriental dark ages. i saw painted, red-lipped beauties with slit-shaped dark eyes and faces like dolls, being carried in sedan-chairs in copper-lid-shaped hats. fanning themselves, they passed by and were carried to the palm-house and down corridors to their mats. i made the acquaintance of a japanese sailor; he was a genuine fellow, and took a lot of trouble to satisfy my curiosity. i was introduced to his family; they lived at suraka, if i remember the name aright. i went into their house, a wicker bungalow, and was greeted with, “o hayo!”[14] two daughters in kimonos, pink and orange-yellow, waited on me, bowing and curtseying in eastern style. the old mother was intelligent-looking; she had a face like a south sea idol, with kind, dove-like eyes. the room was covered with soft mats, and the walls, of matted panels, were carved with oriental designs. i felt exceedingly happy as i sat by the oriental maidens and ate savoury rice and fowl and drank saki. the daughters screamed with laughter as i used chopsticks instead of the fork which they gave me. i slept there that night and went with the family next day to see the sights, among them the asakusa temple, where they worshipped the goddess kwannon. beautiful green lands surrounded the oriental city. sarawana, my japanese sailor’s sister, shuffled beside me, chatting away in japanese as hard as her tongue could go, and pointing to the cherry and plum trees in full bloom; the quaint old mother and the others came on behind. they think a great deal of their cherry and plum trees, but as i gazed at them i thought of dear old england. i did not hear the blackbird singing in those cherry-trees; i only saw large crimson butterflies flitting over the boughs, and, on the fair slopes, strange bamboo-fenced bungalows, instead of the country cottages and smoking chimneys of kent.
14. glad to see you.
they enticed me to a tea-room festival, where i had a large bowl of tea, the national beverage. i sat cross-legged on a little mat by sarawana, whose bright eyes sparkled and whose red lips often parted in a cheery laugh, revealing her pearly teeth. geisha girls played samisens and biwas, and danced in oriental curves round us. they were mostly pretty maidens, with small white teeth and eyes that peeped beneath their pencilled brows like the frightened eyes of squirrels. they had beautiful hair too, with a bit of the national cherry blossom stuck into it. as they sang and strummed on their stringed, lyre-like instruments they seemed perfectly oblivious of all around them; their oblique eyes seemed to gaze on something miles away.
sarawana had been a geisha girl and played for her living as i had, and so we became comrades. next day i took her and her sister down by the river. it was a beautiful spot; the banks were smothered with cherry and plum trees, camphor woods and bamboos. “why are you so sad, sarawana?” i said as i sat by her side. her sister sat with a japanese lad among the bamboos just by. “me litee samaro, and he dead”; and then she sang a little japanese song, after wiping her eyes with the big sleeve of her blue kimono. we were quite alone, only the little yellow birds twittered in the plum boughs overhead. “what does that song mean, sarawana?” i said, and then she told me, in pidgin-english, its meaning.
“unblown the cherry blossom blooms
are hid in the cold of dead lips, weeping to blossom,
and crescent moons of coming springs
are pale for ever in thine eyes—o my love,
kwannon sits on her throne, samaro,
pale as chrysanthemums waiting thee
as camphor trees sigh over thy grave,
o my samaro.”
“did you love him much, sarawana?”
“me litee him as the birds the boughs; the river cry of him: ‘o my samaro!’” then i tried to comfort her. “laugh and be happy, and come on the river in a pleasure junk,” for as i spoke a japanese boatman beckoned us, laid his rowing-poles down and started to bargain with me. then sarawana answered: “me litee you-ee; geisha girl want be ap-pee little while.”
“of course,” i replied; and then she said: “samaro dead, but he know me good-ee and white man know-ee too!” then she lifted her pale blue kimono and revealed her tiny, clogged feet and ankles as she stepped into the junk; and by my side, singing melody and words that i could not understand, she went down the river. i thoroughly enjoyed myself, sympathised with the sad little geisha girl, and admired her modesty and poetic tenderness for the dead youth that she loved.
i saw many geisha girls and japanese women of all classes, but they were not all like sarawana, and so i tell you of her. japanese men and women are very much like the white races; just one difference marks their characters with a ray of spiritual light: the girls, boys, women and men of japan are poetic, everything about them is a symbol. a butterfly sat on sarawana’s hand: it was a kiss of her dead lover, and when it flew away it went back to his grave to kiss the flowers and make him happy.
the birds in the plum trees sing old love vows; their wings fading in the sunset are the beautiful thoughts of the dead or the living flying home to heaven again. japanese eyes shine with tears of joy as they think of those things at which english girls and boys would toss their heads back and scream with laughter.
i did not return to my ship, but stayed at tokio till my money had all gone. for a while i stopped with my japanese sailor friend; he was a generous fellow, and invited me to stay with him and his people as long as i wished. i taught sarawana to play some easy melodies on my violin, and i was surprised at the quick way she picked up fiddle-playing. she taught me to play one or two japanese tunes, and i sat outside her bamboo bungalow and played as she sang, and the cherry blossoms dropped on us from the branches overhead.
i will not tell you all my experiences at tokio, but i made a bold bid to get a living out of my violin and secured several good pupils. a japanese lady of note was one of them; she was connected with the mikado’s court and had relatives in tokio. she paid me well, and i made good headway with her, and she was exceedingly kind to me. i also had a few englishwomen as pupils, and went to yokohama to give two of them lessons daily.
sarawana persuaded me to get up a kind of geisha orchestra. she played second fiddle and the cymbals. i ventured forth to a grand festival with my japanese geisha troupe. when it became known that i was friendly with the geisha girls i lost my best pupils, though there was no harm in anything that i did. sarawana’s mother was pleased with our venture, and was delighted when she saw her daughters dressed up in brilliant kimonos and decked out in sashes of rich yellow and blue, with red flowers in their hair! i thought more of the novelty of it than i did of the money i might make. how romantic it all seemed as we marched along, laughing, under the white-blossomed cherry-trees in far-off japan. i did not know that professors and teachers of english ladies should not go about with geisha girls. however, i enjoyed myself, and my memory of sarawana and tince, her sister, as i called her, and her geisha friends is sweeter to me than the memory of those pupils i lost.
my geisha troupe failed, and i secured an engagement as violinist at a missionary hall. sarawana and her family attended the meetings. i worked there for about three weeks and received a good salary; it was easy, but unmusical, work. i had to play the mission harmonium twice a day, on sundays three times. the hall was always crammed with converts: old men, young men and girls, some of them dressed in japanese costume and others in european. some wore tall hats and white collars; they sang english hymns, though the words were translated into japanese. the old men and women sang very much out of tune, but looked very earnest; their wooden mouths opened and shut as i scraped away. the mission was conducted by english women missionaries, as well as by men. the japanese women were very decent people, and when i left they made a collection for me and handed me quite a considerable sum. i composed a hymn and dedicated it to the society, but whether they ever published it or not i do not know; they said they would. when i bade my japanese friends good-bye they seemed sorry to see me go, especially sarawana and my sailor comrade. he had a wooden-looking face that smiled eternally, like a carved idol. when he was fast asleep on his mat beside me he still smiled, and so he was a good comrade, for i was subject to fits of depression, and when the little japanese maid would play her lament and sing of her dead lover i used to wish she was not so faithful.
i was then about twenty-two years of age and had seen much of the world. very often i would lie awake for hours thinking of things that should have happened, considering the great faith i had in them.
i sometimes thought of going back to england and settling down as a violinist, but then the thought of my country’s terrible decorum quashed my longing. i had been a good deal in queensland and had several good friends there; sad memories, too, of a bush girl’s grave by the swamp oak gullies. sometimes i longed for australian bush scenes as a lad longs for his own country. i had been to sydney, melbourne, adelaide and brisbane several times since i first saw them, but things even in one short absence were rapidly changing. as the ships came in crammed with emigrants from all parts of the world the surrounding bush-land of the seaboard cities and towns was cut down and up went thousands of wooden houses. and so old spots disappeared with the bush-land which the australian hates. if you say to a colonial “i have been across hundreds of miles of your bush-land with my swag, camping out,” he hangs his head with shame, blushes and says: “i know, i know; but we hope soon to cut it all down. i suppose you’ve seen our towns?”
there is no doubt about it, the majority of australians born are ashamed of the wild bush-lands, and love the streets and spires and walls of bricks and mortar. up country it’s all emigrant englishmen, and a few australians who were born there and so could not help themselves. as for me, i loved the bush and my memories of the bush, and when i went to the old spots and saw wooden homesteads standing on the slopes where i camped by my bush fire i felt sad about it, even world-weary and old as i looked across the few years and saw the hollows and far-off forest trees waving in the moonlight dusk for miles and miles along the shores of my memory.
so i began to think of australia again as i lay in bed at the grand hotel, yokohama, and dreamt of my old days there. i could not go back to tokio, at least anywhere near the mission folk, for i had told them i was going straight back to england. i had really intended doing so, but i thought i could get a berth on a ship and save my few pounds instead of paying for my passage. in the end i was left almost penniless and stranded in yokohama. i lodged for a while at a european’s house. he had married a japanese woman and kept a kind of sailors’ lodging-home. i had some strange companions in my rooms; i think they were moslem, buddhist and brahmin men. they were fierce-looking fellows, wore white turbans and had swarthy faces with curly, close-cropped beards. they knelt on little mats and prayed and chanted day and night. i found out after that one or two of them were mohammedans. their ancient-looking faces wore an omar-khayyám-like expression; from them i heard about astoreth and osiris, allah, mahomet, and a lot more about oriental and eastern creeds. i noticed that they were all very earnest in their prayers, and when i walked suddenly into my room to fetch my violin one evening two of them were kneeling in prayer at the window, worshipping the sunset. they never turned a hair at my interruption, but went on pouring forth solemn, strange words to the dying fires of japan’s horizon. it seemed to me then and now that all the so-called creeds were but one vast monotheistic cry in various dialects, each creed a different expression only, all of them instruments in the vast orchestra of life’s drama, playing for the same end—universal, hopeful harmony. the stars vary in magnitude and position, but they are all singing the same earnest melody; for they too are finite, and sing on as those strange men did in the japanese doss-house at yokohama.
i strolled along the wharfs at yokohama harbour with a young english sailor whom i met at the lodging-home. we were both extremely hard up. alongside the wharf lay the s.s. port piree, and we resolved to make a dash for it and stow away. she was due to leave at sunset. the funnel was belching forth smoke; the sailors were standing with their friends on deck. with my violin in my hand i walked straight up the gangway, my comrade just behind me. i was well dressed, and the quartermaster bowed as i slipped on deck and asked to see the skipper. “he’s in his cabin, i think, sir!” “all right,” i said, and beckoning my friend as though he were my valet, i walked across the deck and along the starboard alleyway. we stood by the stokehold entrance and waited our chance. the hatchway to the coal bunkers was open. “now!” i said. in a moment we had taken the final plunge and disappeared in the ship’s bowels. scrambling across the coal, we huddled close together and waited. it seemed ages before she went, and then we heard the rattling, rusty chain of the anchor coming up and the throb of the winches, and the engines started; we were off. my dear old comrade beside me, breathing in the darkness, was worth his weight in gold. “we’re off now, jack,” i said, and he answered: “god knows where to, i don’t!” and laughed. we had some boiled eggs and a cooked fowl, so we ate something and then slept. when we awoke the boat was rolling heavily; it was dark, though possibly daylight up on deck. i curled up by my chum and slept again. three days after we emerged, starving and sweating, choked with coal-dust and looking like two dissipated negroes.
the chief mate said “hello?” and we gave a grim smile as he said: “i shall have to take you fellows up to the skipper.” up we went and stood on the bridge. the skipper gazed at us through the hot sunshine for a moment sternly. no land in sight as the boat cut across the pacific at twelve knots. “put them in the stokehold,” he said, and then turned on his heel and started tramping the bridge once more.
by heavens! i was not built for stokehold work. for a week we shovelled coal, and became like skeletons, sweating all our vigour away. then i played the violin to the engineers, and their chief got the head steward to appeal for my services in the saloon. my comrade had to work still in the stokehold, but i took care that he had good food. i commandeered tins of stewed californian pears and meat, and built his strength up. he swallowed them down with coal-dust and repaid me with grateful eyes.
for out at sea with sailors a fellowship exists that is almost unknown in the cities of the world. i suppose a ray of the illimitable gets into their brains. the vastness of the ocean, its endless sky-lines, and the ships appearing through them with singing sailors aloft, then passing away, just as stars pass singing something in the uncounted ages of god: these things unconsciously influence their souls and they become children again, forgetting the respectability of civilisation and feeling the humanity that makes men die for each other in the desert spaces and oceans of the world.
men slumbering in affluence and the tribal pride of some dubious ancestry often appear soulless. suddenly stricken with some grief or poverty, they reveal something really decent in their natures, something that longed for recognition when the body waxed fat on food and pride—pride in the barbarian deeds of their ancestors, deeds which done now would get the doer ten years in sing sing or wormwood scrubbs. there’s nothing like living on “hard tack” in a tramp steamer’s fo’c’sle, or on crab-apples in the australian bush, or in cities by playing the violin, to bring out the best or worst in men. sorrow writes the true bible of the universe and expresses all the poetry of existence.
botanical gardens, ballarat, n.s.w.
though i have seen much of the world and had many downfalls, the atmosphere of my boyhood and its ideals remains. i still have deep faith in god’s merciful providence, in the friendship of men, and in the earnest love of women. the old heroes of my dreaming boyhood still move with me as i travel on; the kindly eyes of earnest men and women shine through the mists of my memories and sweeten with light my dreaming existence; not till i die will they die. i love to hear the laughter of children; their innocent voices and little wails of grief express to me cries from the great heart of music, till i fancy i can see the flowers growing over their inevitable graves. in that feeling i love all men and women; and those who have sinned have my unknown sympathy as well as my unknown love.
could i have my own way i would lead a vast army to demolish the mighty cathedrals and churches of europe, and to rob the wealth of the altars, selling the debris and giving the proceeds of the glorious battle in the cause of true religion to the thousands of starving little city children, providing covering for their tiny emaciated bodies. god would be my best friend in fighting for his helpless family and providing comfort for deserted women and fallen men. there is more true unselfish religion in saving a butterfly’s life than in moaning for many years in a cathedral pew about your next lease of life.
but to return to my travels and troubles.
i well remember that stowaway trip. the boat was bound for sydney. we had beautiful weather, and when i was a legitimate member of the crew i did not regret my headlong dip into the stokehold. my comrade and i were treated well, and my violin brought me respect and applause when i played in the saloon concert. my fiddle has always been a dear friend, and wailed passionately on my behalf when i have been in disgrace. i don’t think i could find a more trustful and soulful companion if i started off to tramp the world again to-morrow.
as we were flying through sydney heads we received a message from the captain. he wanted to see my comrade and me on the bridge. he was an elderly, short-bearded man with kind eyes. “well,” he said, “i shall have to hand you two over to the authorities when we get in. have you anything to say for yourselves?”
“no, sir,” i said; “only we are sorry for stowing away, and wish to thank you for your kindness to us under such circumstances.”
he said “um,” and then stopped walking to and fro to say: “have you got any money?”
“yes, sir,” i said. “we’ll go ashore and clear as soon as we get alongside.”
“i’ll let you off this time.”
we both thanked him, and half-an-hour after the chief mate came up to us, and saying, “here you are,” handed us ten shillings each. they do not always do that when you stowaway, but that was my lucky experience. i can assure you that seafaring men are the bravest and kindest in the world; they know it and its ways by instinct. whenever i hear of a captain going down with his ship a lump comes up in my throat.
