[-90-]
CHAPTER IX.
RATCLIFF HIGHWAY.
RATCLIFF HIGHWAY conjures up in the mind of a nervous or
impressionable person all sorts of disagreeable imaginings. Visions of swarthy
Malays and thick-lipped Lascars, of drunken Jack Tars and equally drunken women,
flit before his eyes. The majority of good people would avoid a visit to
Ratcliff Highway as they would the devil or the tax-collector. I admit that,
from all I had heard about it, I rather dreaded a pilgrimage thither, and that
the horribly unpleasant fancies I have hinted at above were not altogether
absent from my mind. However, when I went there I found that, like the
extraction of a tooth, it was more disagreeable in the anticipation than in the
reality. Ratcliff Highway is by no means so black as it is painted. It is a
dark, unpleasant street enough, and for the diversity and intensity of its
smells would rival Cologne itself. The men are drunken, and the women simply
horrible; but I would rather walk down Ratcliff Highway twenty times, in
ordinary attire, than down Flower and Dean Street [-91-] twice.
There is, of course, an amount of rough horse-play; but I never saw anything
approaching to actual violence. I received the first intimation that I had
actually reached this noted and somewhat maligned thoroughfare by feeling a
shock like a small earthquake. A partially inebriated gentleman, who laboured
under the impression, which he expressed with great emphasis, that I was a
sanguinary Fenian, had pushed up against me with all his force. As I have an
insuperable objection to being under an obligation to any one, I returned the
push with all the interest I could, and somehow or other-it is not for me to
explain how-my assailant found himself in the gutter, whence he immediately
sprang, averring that I was a "jolly old cock," and offering to
"stand a pot." Declining the proffered hospitality, I continued my
peregrinations, seeing, for some considerable time, nothing more terrible than
one or two fights between men and women. It must be admitted that the ladies who
frequent Ratcliff Highway are deserving of the very worst that can be said about
them. A short study of their idiosyncrasies is entertaining, but hardly
edifying. Step into a public-house and you will see them, half a dozen of them
perhaps, executing an abominable sort of can-can, accompanying it with
the most indecent posturing, and hiccoughing out snatches of the most revolting
doggrel; while the landlady sits behind the counter shaking her fat sides with
laughter. No effort is made to restrain their ardent spirits, or to induce them
to confine their mirth within the bounds of decency. It is but fair to [-92-]
add that, even if made, such efforts would in all probability be
unsuccessful.
I had had enough of the Highway, and was seeking a
resting-place for the night, when my progress was accelerated by an incident
which might possibly have terminated unpleasantly for me. As I was passing a
corner at which some half-dozen men were standing, one of them threw a
particularly frowsy and evil-smelling cap. It struck me in the face, and as it
was falling to the ground I caught it and pretended to throw it back. I then
walked leisurely on, chuckling to myself as I watched them groping in the dark
for the cap which I still carried in my hand. They found out their mistake,
however, rather too quickly, and the whole lot came running after me, vowing
vengeance and threatening all kinds of unpleasant consequences. I waited till
the leader was very close to me, and then, flinging the cap with all my force
full in his face, I took to my heels. Not a moment too soon, either, for they
continued the pursuit, and had they overtaken me, I might possibly have been
unpleasantly mauled. As it was, however, I darted into an open doorway, and,
pushing a little inner swing-door, found myself in the kitchen of "King
David's Chambers."
There must have been some mistake. " Behold, I dwell in
a house of cedar," said the Psalmist King; and he is also responsible for
the assertion that "all men are liars." Perhaps the truth of the
aphorism may account for the singular inappositeness of the title given to the
"doss-'ouse."
[-93-] King David's Chambers are
reminiscent rather of loimopyra than Lebanon. The exterior presents a somewhat
imposing appearance, and awakes expectations of comfort and cosiness which the
reality by no means justifies. In the passage are painted, in conspicuous
characters, two notices, one intimating that "no females are
admitted," and the other requesting "gentlemen" not to stand
about the doorway. The former, having regard to the character of the Ratcliff
Highway damsels, is welcome and reassuring; the latter, owing to the scarcity of
"gentlemen" in that salubrious district, is entirely unnecessary.
The kitchen is by no means so large as one would imagine from
the appearance of the building viewed from the street, but there is sufficient
dirt there to allow of its being distributed over a much larger surface, and
then appearing exceedingly unwholesome. The company at the time of my arrival
was not very numerous, the majority of the lodgers having retired to rest. One
of the most important personages present was a gentleman rejoicing in the name
of Barrett, to which his comrades facetiously prefixed the Christian name of
"Wilson," a compliment which I fear the eminent actor would hardly
have appreciated. Another interesting specimen was an inebriated old gentleman
who was offering to "harger" on any point, and to "conflute"
any opposing "hargermint" that might be adduced. He confined himself,
however, to "hargering" with a young man in a maudlin state of
intoxication as to the advisability of his "standin' a pot."
"You're a fule, Tom," said the [-94-] venerable
sage, "an' the honly advice I kin give yer is to knock a 'ole into that
thick 'ead o' yourn, take some o the himpudence out, an' put some common sense
an' generosity in." "Yes, but," rejoined the young man, with a
stupid stare, and evidently taking the recommendation in a literal sense, "w'ich
part of my 'ead should I knock a nole in?" and here he removed a
dilapidated hat, and disclosed an exceedingly unkempt and dirty-looking cranium.
"W'ich part?" repeated the elderly gentleman, rising unsteadily, and
working his arms up and down see-saw fashion- "W'ich part? wy, in the bump
of hub-bub-bub-nevlence, to be sure," and then he stalked out of the room,
with as much dignity as a man who can hardly support the weight of his own body
can maintain. He was followed by the younger votary of Bacchus, and we heard
them still "hargerin' the pint" - no pun is intended - with loud
voices and many oaths, as they adjourned to the opposite public- house.
Their exit was the signal for the entrance of a little old
man, whose pinched and haggard features were quite sufficient, without the aid
of his shrill, piping voice, to tell us that he was hungry. Having enlightened
us, however, to this extent, he commenced to prepare his supper. Shade of Soyer!
what cookery! Hanging by the side of the chimneypiece was a piece of thick iron
wire. During the evening it had been utilized for stirring the fire and beating
the cat, and one gentleman had used it for the purpose of cleaning the bowl of a
particularly filthy [-95-] clay pipe. The hungry
gentleman simply poked this through two large bloaters, and set them in front of
the blazing fire to toast. He was not fastidious. He made no pretence of
cleaning them, but as soon as they were well warmed through, he sat down and ate
them, gills, bones, heads, and all. I was glad when the last morsel had
disappeared down his voracious throat, for they were, to put it mildly, rather
high, and the smell of them, no less than the manner of the cookery and the
meal, was sickening and disgusting.
A puffy-faced youth having started to go to bed, the deputy
turned to me and remarked, "This cove sleeps next to you; if you like to go
to bed now 'e'll show you yourn." The recommendation was delivered too much
in the tone of a command to be lightly disregarded, and I followed the
fat-cheeked young man upstairs. Never before or since have I seen such a
staircase in a common lodging-house. They were absolutely luxurious in their
breadth, and the ease and the comfort of the ascent filled me with the most
sanguine expectations as to the probable nature of the bedroom I was to occupy.
I was soon disillusionized. The bedroom - Heaven save the
mark ! - was a narrow slip of a place, with a small gas-jet burning at one end.
And here let me direct the particular attention of the reader to a fact which is
important as exemplifying the wisdom and care exercised by those who are
responsible for the inspection of common lodging-houses. The inspector had given
his permission, which of course was prominently posted on the wall, to place five
beds in [-96-] the room. It was absolutely
impossible to screw in more than four, owing to the size and shape of the
apartment, and even with four the heat was overpowering and the stench
unbearable. Of course, if he could, the proprietor would have put five people to
sleep in the room. The law, as executed by a sapient inspector, said he might.
Fortunately for us it was an utter impossibility, but what can be said of the
common sense, not to say the humanity, of the man who authorized a lodging-house
keeper to place in a room more beds than, with any amount of planning and
contriving, could be squeezed within its four walls.
The apartment, however, was cleaner than the ordinary
"doss-'ouse" bedroom. The walls had been recently papered, and my
visit was, happily for me, paid on "clean sheet-day." But nothing
could atone for the absolute brutality - there is no other word for it - of
placing four men to sleep in a room so small. The stench was unendurable, and
things were not rendered more pleasant by the fact that we were lying just above
the kitchen fireplace; and that the intolerable heat made the entomological
specimens that infested the room more lively than they would have been in a
cooler atmosphere. I had the monopoly of the one window which was just by my
bed, and I threw down the sash as far as it would go; but as the only things to
be seen outside were brick walls and tiled roofs, and there was not a breath of
air stirring, I failed to derive much advantage from the proximity of the
casement.
[-97-] My puffy-faced friend,
although he had lived in common lodging-houses for years, and had slept in the
bed he then occupied for six months, did not seem to be able to find words in
which to express his abhorrence of the disgusting smell that pervaded the room.
He was not a bad fellow, however, and as some one had to curse the
stench, perhaps it was better that he should do it than I. There were seventy
beds, he told me, in the house, which he declared, with many an oath, was
"a sight better than most kips, though none on 'em ain't too bloomin'
grand." And then with one final volley of oaths, all in reference to the
horribly malodorous state of the room, he turned over on his side, and the
stertorous snorts that issued from his corner of the room soon told me that
"Nature's soft nurse" had "weighed his eyelids down, and steeped
his senses in forgetfulness."
There was a large room next door to that in which I was
lying, in which some ten or a dozen men were located. These gentlemen, who were
all more or less under the influence of liquor, were disposed to be quarrelsome,
and the noise of their altercations would have been sufficient, even without the
persecution I suffered from the vermin, to preclude me from snatching the
proverbial "forty winks." I lay there, tossing from side to side,
feeling, to say the truth, much as Will Waddle did in the bed "immediately
over the oven." About one o'clock the deputy came in to turn off the
gas. "W'y, sonny," he said, "you does seem wakeful."
As soon as I heard a neighbouring church clock strike two I rose, dressed
myself, and [-98-] slipped quietly out. It was the
first time I had eve slept in the apartments of an Oriental potentate ; and as I
left King David's Chambers I mentally determined that, if they all resembled
those, it should most certainly be the last.