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 The illiterate do not quote melodrama; melodrama quotes them.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............