Tales of the Old London Slum – Complete Series. Morrison Arthur

For a woman fell in her neighbours’ respect the later in the week her washing day came.

      So Johnny explored the streets with wide eyes and a full heart. For here was London, where they made great things—ships and engines. There were places he fancied he recognised—great blank walls with masts behind them. But now the masts seemed fewer and shorter than in the old days: as in truth they were, for now more of the ships were steamships, filling greater space for half the show of mast. Then in other places he came on basins filled with none but sailing-ships, and here the masts were as tall and fine as ever, stayed with much cordage, and had their yards slung at a gallant slope, like the sword on Sir Walter Raleigh’s hip. And at Blackwall Stairs, looking across the river, stood an old, old house that Johnny stared at for minutes together: a month or two later he heard the tradition that Sir Walter Raleigh himself had lived there. It was first of a row of old waterside buildings, the newest of which had looked across, and almost fallen into, the river, when King George’s ships had anchored off Blackwall—and King Charles’s for that matter. There, too, stood the Artichoke Tavern, dean and white and wooden, a heap of gables and windows all out of perpendicular: a house widest and biggest everywhere at the top, and smallest at the ground floor; a house that seemed ready to topple into the river at a push, so far did its walls and galleries overhang the water, and so slender were the piles that supported them. Here, in the square space on the quay, brown men in blue jerseys sold bloaters by the score, stringing them through the gills with tarry yarn; and half the brown men wore earrings. Below, on the foreshore, lay many boats, and children ran among them, or raked for river-mussels among the stones.

      In another place he came on just such market-streets as he remembered to have trotted along, at his mother’s side, in the old London life; though now, indeed, they seemed something dirtier and meaner, and the people seemed less cheerful. But this was a place away from Harbour Lane—a neighbourhood of dull and dingy rows of little houses, range on range. And still farther he found another street of shops, or rather half a street, for one side was a blank wall. But no great skeleton ship lifted its ribs above the bricks, and no hammers clanged behind them; for it was a ship-yard abandoned, and a painted board, thick with grime, offered the place for sale or hire. Some of the shops opposite were abandoned too, and the others were poor and dull. Johnny walked a few steps backward, looking at the shops, and when he turned about at a corner, he almost scorched himself at a coke fire where chestnuts were roasting; and there behind the fire stood the pockmarked man himself, not a whit altered! There he stood, with his hands deep in his pockets, and tapped the kerb with his clogged boots, just as he had stood when the great ship was making, and the lights flared round it, and the shops were all open and busy: perhaps the pitted face was a trifle paler, but that was all.

      But Harbour Lane and thereabout were the most interesting parts, and the pleasantest for Johnny. Just beyond the Stairs, and the old houses, and the Artichoke Tavern, was a dock-inlet, with an extraordinary bridge that halved in the middle, and swung back to each of two quays, to let ships through. Men worked it quite easily, with a winch, and Johnny could have watched for an hour. But just here he caught sight of an acquaintance. For down on the quay below the bridge-end, sitting on a mooring-post, was Mr. Butson. A trifle seedy and fallen in condition, Johnny fancied, and grumly ill-used as ever. As Johnny looked, Mr. Butson took a pipe from his pocket, and a screw of paper. The paper yielded nothing. Mr. Butson raked through both jacket-pockets, and scowled at his empty hands. In the end, after a gloomy inspection of the pipe, he put it away and returned to savage meditation. And Johnny went home.