The Trial of Elizabeth Cree (3 page)

There was much more in this vein, which seemed very tedious to Elizabeth, but eventually the curtain was pulled aside by a young girl in a large old-fashioned bonnet; it revealed a London street scene which, in the flickering gaslight, seemed to Elizabeth the most wonderful sight in the world. The only paintings she had ever seen had been the crude images daubed upon the boats by the riverside, and here was a picture of the Strand along which she had just walked—but how much more glorious and iridescent it now seemed, with its red and blue shopfronts,
its tall lampposts, and its stalls and their goods piled high. This was better than any memory.

A boy came out from the wings, and at once the spectators began to whistle and stamp their feet in anticipation. He had the strangest face she had ever seen; it was so slim that his mouth seemed to stretch from one side to the other, and she was sure that it must have continued around his neck; he was so pale that his large dark eyes seemed to shine out, and to be gazing at something beyond the world itself. He was wearing a stovepipe hat which was almost as tall as he was, with the strangest medley of patched cloths turned into a coat. Elizabeth realized at once that he was acting the part of an Italian hurdy-gurdy boy, and the entire audience stayed silent as, in a slow, sweet voice, he began to sing “Pity the Poor Italian.” She was ready to cry at the sorrow of it, as he depicted his life of poverty and misery, but then after a few verses he sauntered off the stage with his hands in his pockets. A few moments later an old woman emerged—except that, as far as Elizabeth could tell, she was not really old at all. She was of no age, and any age, dressed in a plain gown with an apron tied around her front. “I was in a terrible state last night,” she told the audience who, much to Elizabeth’s surprise, were already laughing. “A very terrible state. My daughter came back to me, you see.” Suddenly Elizabeth was reminded of her mother, lying with her putrefying kidney, and she began to laugh as well. Even as she laughed she realized that this was the same boy, dressed in female clothes: there was no more pain now, and no more suffering. “Oh she’s a mean woman, that daughter of mine. She’s so mean that she’ll buy half-a-dozen oysters and eat them in front of a mirror to make them look like a dozen. Oh you
must
know my daughter. Good life-a-mighty. Don’t look so simple. Everybody knows my daughter.” The boy in the clothes of the old woman now
lifted up his skirt and began to perform a clog dance, while the little theater seemed to glow with the force of his personality. Elizabeth understood now that this must be the Dan Leno she had seen on the bills. She did not know how long his act continued but, afterwards, she was scarcely aware of the singing duets, the acrobats and the colored minstrels. She was conscious only of the strange comedy with which Leno had assuaged the misery of her life.

It was over. When she shuffled out with the others into the street, it was as if she had been banished from some world of light. She walked down Craven Street and then crept over Hungerford Bridge—she knew her way to Lambeth Marsh well enough, even in the darkness, and she walked slowly past the riverbank where the rats and the “mud larks” went about their work. There were three small boys dragging something out of the water, but even this spectacle could not satisfy her after the enchantment of the Craven Street theater. By the time she arrived back at her lodgings in Peter Street, she was quite worn down by the excitements of the evening, and paid only cursory attention to her mother lying upon the bed; there was some white and green spittle coming from the side of her mouth, and her body trembled in a fit or delirium. Eventually Elizabeth brought her a cordial which she had prepared with her own hands, and forced her to drink it. “Don’t look so simple, Mother,” she whispered. “You’re very nicely, thank you.” Then she began to rip down the pages of the Bible which had been pasted to the walls.

Her mother was given a pauper’s funeral two days later, and the night after the burial Elizabeth returned to the theater in Craven Street where she heard Dan Leno sing one of those ditties
which led to his being known as “The Funniest Man on Earth”:

D
an Leno was widely believed to be the funniest man of that, or any, age but the best description of him is probably Max Beerbohm’s in the
Saturday Review
: “I defy anyone not to have loved Dan Leno at first sight. The moment he capered on, with that air of wild determination, squirming in every limb with some deep grievance that must be outpoured, all hearts were his … that poor little battered personage, so put upon, yet so plucky, with his squeaky voice and his sweeping gestures, bent but not broken, faint but pursuing, incarnate of the will to live in a world not at all worth living in …”

He was born at Number 4, Eve Court, in a neighborhood beside the old church of St. Pancras before the Midland Railway Company erected its station there—the day of his birth, the 20th December, 1850, was also, curiously enough, that of Elizabeth Cree. His parents were already “theatricals” and toured the music halls and variety saloons as “Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Wilde, the Singing and Acting Duettists” (Dan Leno’s real name was actually George Galvin but he quickly discarded it, just as Elizabeth Cree was never known to use her mother’s surname). Their son first appeared on the stage at the age of four, at the Cosmotheka Music Hall in Paddington, wearing an outfit which his mother had manufactured from the silk of an old carriage umbrella. He was billed as a “contortionist and posturer” at this early point in his career—he did indeed perform some very neat turns and tricks, perhaps the most remarkable being his impression of a corkscrew opening a wine bottle. At the age of eight he was
billed as “The Great Little Leno” (all his life he remained of very small stature) and then a year later he became known as “Great Little Leno, the Quintessence of Cockney Comedians” or, on occasions, “Descriptive and Cockney Character Vocalist.” By the autumn of 1864, when Elizabeth first saw him, he had already developed that humor for which he was to become truly famous. Yet how was it that, less than twenty years later, Dan Leno was suspected by the police officers of the Limehouse Division of being the murderous Limehouse Golem?

S
EPTEMBER
6, 1880: It was a fine bright morning, and I could feel a murder coming on. I had to put out that fire, so I took a cab to Aldgate and then walked down Whitechapel way. I may say that I was eager to begin, because I had in mind a novelty for the first time: to suck out the breath of a dying child, and see if all its youthful spirit mingled with mine. Oh, in that case, I might go on forever! But why do I say child, when I mean any life? Look, I am trembling again.

I had thought to see more people around Gammon Square, but in these poor lodging houses they are glad to sleep all day and take off the hunger. In earlier years they would have been put out in the streets at dawn, but these days standards are crumbling altogether—what have we come to, when the laboring poor no longer need to labor? I turned down into Hanbury Street, and a pretty stench they all made. There was the filthy aroma of a pie stall, where no doubt cat meat and dog meat were as plentiful as ever, and all manner of Jew merchants with their “Why hurry past?” and “How are you on a fine day such as this?” I can bear the smell of the Jew but the smell of the Irish, as thick and heavy as old cheese, is not to be endured. There were two of them lying dead drunk outside a free-and-easy, and I
crossed the street to get them out of my nostrils. I entered a crumbling confectionery shop on that side, and purchased a pennyworth of licorice to make my tongue black. Who knows where I would have to place it that night?

Then another fine thought occurred to me. I had an hour or two before the night came on and I knew well enough that, a little way down towards the river, stood the house which had witnessed the immortal Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1812. On a spot as sacred to the memory as Tyburn or Golgotha, an entire family had been mysteriously and silently dispatched into eternity by an artist whose exploits will be preserved forever in the pages of Thomas De Quincey. John Williams had come upon the household of the Marrs and wiped them from the world as you would wipe a dish. So what more pleasant excursion than a stroll down the Highway itself?

In truth it was a mean dwelling for such a glorious crime—no more than a narrow shopfront with some rooms above it. The man Marr, whose blood had been shed for the sake of greatness, had been a hosier by trade. Now, in his place, was a secondhand clothes seller. Thus, as the Bible tells us, are the sacred temples defiled. I walked in at once, and asked him how he did. “Pretty poor, sir,” he said. “Pretty poor.” I looked upon the place, just behind the counter, where Williams had split open the skull of one child.

“This is a good spot for trade, is it not?”

“It is said to be, sir. But all times are hard times along the Highway.” He watched me, as I stooped over and touched the ground with my forefinger. “A gentleman like yourself has no call for custom here, sir. Am I right?”

“My wife has a maid, who needs no finery. Do you have something like an old-fashioned dress?”

“Oh, there are many dresses and gowns, sir. Feel the quality in these ones.” He brushed his hand against a row of fusty objects,
and I hovered close so that I might smell them. What dirty flesh had been pressed against this cloth? In this same room—perhaps upon these very boards—the artist had craved for more blood and hunted out the mistress of the house.

“Do you have a wife and daughter?”

He looked at me for a moment, and then laughed. “Oh, I know what you mean, sir. No. They never wear the articles. We are not of the poorest sort.”

John Williams had climbed those stairs, and clubbed her down even as she bent over the grate. “And do you wonder, then, that these are not for me or my maid? Good day to you. I have a little business waiting for me elsewhere.” I walked out into Ratcliffe Highway, but I could not resist looking up at the rooms above the shop. What wonders had been performed in that narrow confined space? And what if they might come again? That would be a consummation never before seen in this city.

But I had other fish to fry—some little sprat to catch and cook. It was growing dark now, and the gas was being lit by the time I came into Limehouse. It was the hour to show my hand but, as yet, I was a mere tyro, a beginner, an understudy who could not appear on the great stage without rehearsal. I had first to perfect my work in a secret hour, stolen from the tumult of the city: if only I could find some secluded grove and, like some pastoral being, shed London blood within a green shade. But that was not to be. I was still in my own particular private theater, this garish spot beneath the gas lamps, and here I must perform. But, at first, let it be behind the curtain …

There was a pert little thing lingering outside the alley by the Laburnum Playhouse; she could have been no more than eighteen or nineteen, but in the ways of the street she was already old. She knew the bible of the world, for she had learned it by heart. And what a heart it might prove to be, if it were removed with love and care. I shadowed her as she walked towards
the lodging house for seamen at the corner of Globe Lane. You see how I had studied the streets? I had purchased Murray’s
New Plan of London
, and had plotted all my exits and entrances. There she stood and a few moments later some laboring man, still with the brick dust upon his clothes, came up and whispered to her. She said something in return, and it was all quick motion after that: she led him down Globe Lane towards a ruined house. She had his dust on her when they came out into the light again.

I waited until he had left her, and then made my approach. “Why, little chicken, you must have performed a nice bit of business to become so dusty.”

She laughed, and I could smell the gin upon her breath. Even now her organs were being pickled, as if they were in a surgeon’s jar. “It’s all one to me,” she said. “Have you any money?”

“Look.” I brought out a shining coin. “But consider me. Am I a gentleman? Can you expect me to lie upon the street? I need a good bed and four walls.”

She laughed again. “Well then, gentleman, you must stop at the Bladebone.”

“Where is your bladebone?”

“We need gin, sir. More gin, if you want to be pleased with me.”

It was a public saloon off Wick Street, and looked to be a den of the vilest sort filled with the refuse of London. I would have enjoyed the reek of it, as a plain man—I would have raised my arms, and joined the general uproar against heaven—but, as an artist, I demurred. I could not be seen before my first great work. She noticed that I hesitated, and seemed to smile. “I can tell you are a gentleman, and there is no need to accompany me. I was born here. I know my way well enough.” She took some coins from me and returned a few minutes later with a chamber pot filled with gin. “It is clean,” she said, “quite clean. We never
use it for that. We have the streets, don’t we?” She led me into a nearby court, no bigger than a pocket handkerchief; she staggered as she began to climb the worm-eaten stairs, and some of the gin spilled over the side of the pot. Someone was singing in one of the rooms which we passed, and I knew the words of the old music-hall ditty as well as if I had written them myself:

Then all was silence as we climbed up to the topmost story, and entered a room which seemed to be no more than a den or hut. There was a soiled mattress upon the floor, while on the walls she had pasted photographs of Walter Butt, George Byron and other idols of the stage. Everything smelled of stale drink, and a torn sheet had been carelessly draped across a tiny window. So this was to be my green room or, rather, my red room. This was to mark my entrance upon the stage of the world. She had taken a dirty cup and dipped it into the chamber pot, swallowing the gin all at once. I was concerned that she might miss the fun but I knew well enough that she wished to be free of this sad world, in one way or another. Who was I to forestall her, or persuade her otherwise? I made no move but watched her take another cup of gin. Then, as she lay down upon the bed, I leaned over her and began to brush the dirt and brick dust from her dress. She had almost passed out with the drink, but she managed to clutch my arm as I touched her. “What do you intend to do with me now, sir?” She still lay upon the bed quite dazed, and it occurred to me that she suspected my game and offered herself willingly to my knife. There are those poor souls who, on hearing of an outbreak of cholera, have hastened to the
district in the hope of being infected with the disease. Was that her way? Then it would be a crime to leave her in suspense, would it not?