Viewed by day, say from the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they
offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and drear
or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these houses, Dickens
have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have made of one a frame
for some vignette unforgettable of Limehouse life.
Builded of stone or brick or both as to their landward faces, without
exception they presented to the river false backs of wooden framework which
overhung the water. Ordinarily, their windows were tight-shut, the panes
opaque with accumulated grime--many were broken and boarded. Their look was
dismal, their squalor desperate.
Below, by day, heavy wherries swung moored to the ooze-clad spiles or, when
the tide was out, sprawled upon stinking mud-flats with a gesture of
pathetic helplessness peculiar to stranded watercraft. Seldom was one
observed in use: to all seeming they existed for purposes of atmosphere
alone.
More seldom still did any dwelling betray evidence of inhabitation beyond
faint wisps of smoke, like ghosts of famine, drifting from the chimneypots,
or--perhaps--some unabashed exhibit of red flannel hung out to dry with
wrist or ankle-bands nipped between a window-sash and sill.
By night, however, a stir of furtive life was to be surmised from cryptic
lights that flared and faded behind the crusted window-glass or fell
through opened floor-traps to the thick black element that swirled about
the spiles, and from guarded calls as well, inarticulate cries of hate and
love and pain, rumours of close and crude carousal.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126