Victorian London - Thames - Description of the Thames - 'Under
the Bridge'THE SKETCHER IN LONDON.
UNDER THE BRIDGE.
While the tide of population, at the rate of about ten to fifteen thousand an
hour, is pouring in contrary streams over London liridge—while the omnibuses are
crashing, the wagons are groaning, and the cabs and lighter vehicles are
bounding and rattling along the granite causeway—we shall take the liberty to
glance at what is going on in a portion of that transverse thoroughfare which
runs under the bridge, at a level of thirty or forty feet below.
The stone shaft at the side of the bridge-foot stands open, and from the
dark orifice dusky figures emerge momentarily into the daylight, and are
immediately swallowed up among the passing multitudes. Diving down the broad
stone stairs, we are on the point of stumbling over a bundle of something
animate crouched on the last step of the first flight. It is a poor vagrant
Irishwoman, with three half-naked infants huddled close to her knees : she has
been roaming about all the morning, and has resorted to this halflighted retreat
to divide among her starving progeny the fruits of her mendicant expedition. She
has spread upon her lap the fragments of broken bread, scraps of meat, morsels
of dried fish and cold potatoes; and the children are stuffing the viands into
their mouths, heedless of the discomforts of the sloppy, miry vestibule in which
they take their repast, and of the keen, dank, wintry wind that stirs their
tattered garments as it moans and whines drearily np the shaft.
We are landed at the bottom of the descent in the heart of Thames Street,
amid a babel of tongues, a motley mixture of the city population in a state of
familiar tumultuousness peculiar to the quarter, and a dead-lock of carts,
wagons,, and packages brought to a sudden stand-still by the crashing outwards
of a huge wain and team from the wharf on the river's brink. It is no easy
matter to elbow a way among the press; but the denizens of the place take the
business quite coolly and as a matter of course, and the traffic on the north
side of the street pursues its noisy current unmoved by the clash and clamour of
wheels, and rampant hoofs, and blatant throats, all in active conflict before
the eyes and ears of all comers. There is, moreover, entertainment quite as
pungent for the nose; for, be it known, we have plunged at once into a
combination of smells not the most aromatic. The prevailing odour is the ancient
and venerable one of dried fish, mingled with another which becomes more and
more perceptible as we advance, and at length becomes paramount about the
latitude of Pudding Lane. The flavours of dried fish emanate from a row of
shops, in good part denuded of their fronts, and almost overflowing into one
another and on to the foot-path. Said shops are all crammed to repletion with
every imaginable specimen of dried, smoked, and salted members of the finny
tribe.
There are dried cod and salmon, dried haddocks and mackarel; herrings red
and white, smoked and salted; sprats by the million in the same state; pilchards
in pickle, and oysters in ditto ; anchovies, sardines, camplins, and other
unfamiliar specimens from the Mediterranean; and a vast selection besides, which
we have not the skill to name. All these, piled in heaps, pressed into barrels
and packed into baskets, lie about on floor and table, counter, stall-board and
shelf, in immeasurable quantities; and as we look on, they vibrate in balances,
they are told off in dozens, scores, and hundreds, they are sold and delivered
in pots and tin cases, and they walk off in bag:, basket, or brown paper parcel
to the extent of some cart-loads an hour.
But by this time we have passed the terminus of Fish Street Hill, and are
arriving at that classical and historical locality known as Pudding Lane, where,
two hundred years ago, the great fire of London began that memorable banquet
which, commencing with fish in this spot, finished off with pastry at Pie
Corner. Before we are up with Pudding Lane, that other odour which we mentioned
above begins to assert itself in spite of the dried fish. It is an odour of
oranges, lemons, and dried fruits, and it proceeds from the shops of those mixed
dealers who mingle salt cod and pickled salmon with Barcelona nuts and the
fruits of Madeira and the Azores. Together with these stores, they exhibit also
whole regiments of bottles of all sizes, filled, in defiance of Dr. Jongh, with
cod-liver oil—oil expressed from the veritable liver of the veritable cod, on
that spot and by their own hands.
Arrived at Pudding Lane, we resign for a brief space the fish and the
fish-like smells, and breathe an atmosphere which seems to have been bottled up
long ago in a latitude considerably nearer the tropics than that we are
accustomed to, and, after having grown remarkably musty in confinement, inst let
loose for our delectation. The physiognomy of Pudding Lane is not of a
fascinating kind ; a good proportion of the houses are antiquated, and of that
order of ancient architecture sometimes significantly described as "ramshackled;"
the causeway will accommodate one wagon or cart; the footways on each side one
pedestrian. The shops, though invitingly open, have nothing inviting within, at
least to the vision; trhcre are piles of bulging orange-boxes, little barrels,
and baskets of unpeeled willow in a state of compound fracture; and there are
bags and sacks with their mouths open, disclosing rich hoards of-hazel nuts,
cobs, brazils, and chestnuts in endless variety. The windows do not make a grand
show, but a rather strange and singular one. There are oranges almost as green
as unripe codlins, lemons of the same hue, or with a tip of yellow at their
heels; these repose in beds of dried orange-peel cnt from the fruit of last
season, and of dried lemon peel, to all appearance of a far more ancient date.
There are no end of bungs, some few cut from cork, but the majority turned in
the lathe from inch-thick oak; and there are numberless specimens of a
nondescript article resembling a dozen bungs cemented together, also fashioned
in the lathe from oak. Then there is an assemblage of gourds of various kinds,
from all latitudes, of all sizes, and whose nomenclature it would puzzle us to
set down. Aloft in the uppermost panes are ranks of bottles, containing
orange-juice and lemonjuice, sold or offered for sale, as a notice on the
side-posts informs us, for domestic use or for exportation. All these things
impart no brilliancy to Pudding Lane, which wears a sombre and dingy appearance,
but is lively notwithstanding, inasmuch as a violent quarrel is proceeding in
one of the recesses behind one of the shops, which quarrel appears to afford
considerable excitement to the neighbours, who are Hocking round the door, and
which, judging from the shrill sharp tones of the interlocutors, seems to
proclaim that the lemon-juice is in excess within the domicile.
We have no penchant for witnessing the resolution of this "difficulty," and,
retreating to Thames Street, turn up the next lane to the left in our eastward
progress. This is comparatively a quiet place—peaceable, but decidedly fishy in
odour, though we see no fish. But what is here ? A periwinkle
warehouse,—periwinkles in huge hogsheads, and in mountains, distilling with the
salt ooze and glistening darkly beneath a jet ot gas-light. There is nothing
else in the place; the entire establishment is devoted to periwinkles, and there
they lie on the wet floor in monster masses, while two stalwart fellows, shovel
in hand, are labouring to pile Pelion on Ossa, and all in periwinkles! What a
strange business to speculate in—and to speculate on—is that of a periwinkle
merchant! How does he manage it ? Does he boil the poor creatures himself? does
he take all those millions upon millions of innocent lives and consign them to
death in his monster pot, and make them ready for the pin of the picker and the
tooth of the eater? or does he sell the savoury hosts all alive oh! and leave
the wholesale murders to the retailers ? Then, as to his commercial
anxieties—are periwinkles liable to the influence of a panic ? Does a momentary
crisis make the poor things dull ? Are they brisk and ready to "shell out" when
cash is easy ? and how do they behave when discount is at ten per cent. ? Then,
again, what do the underwriters say to periwinkles ? are they a damageable
commodity ? are they ever brought into the Admiralty Court mixed up with
questions of salvage ? and how do they stand at Lloyd's or on 'Change ? Such are
some of the questions that arise at the first glance at the subject, and we
could propound fifty more if it were worth while; in fact, we could speculate
on periwinkles to the end of a pretty long chapter, but we have no strong
desire to speculate in them. That thought is perplexing; think of a man's
hopes and prospects, all one enjoys and all one longs for, being bound up with
periwinkles! Positively, it would never do.
That speculation on periwinkles has been too much for us, and we rush for
refuge into Dark House Lane, on the opposite side of the way. Dark Honse Lane,
spite of its ominous name, is light enough, and all the lighter that it opens at
the end upon the broad surface of the river, whence a fresh breeze is blowing up
at the moment, and kindly mitigating the smell of fish, which is the native and
the perennial odour of the spot. As for the fish themselves, there they lie,
poor sufferers, on the stall-boards—cods that were alive yesterday, now
stretched motionless and slashed in ghastly gashes—silver whitings purchaseabfe
for copper browns—princely turbots, with the whole tribes of subordinate
flat-fish, all fatefully laid out and waiting to be entombed in the sepulchral
maw of omnivorous London. For Dark House Lane is the supplementary Billingsgate
of the metropolis, and does all day long, for the lovers of fish and a bargain,
what Billingsgate will do only in the early hours of the morning.
At the end of the lane we are at the door of the noted fish dining-house,
where, for such a thing as eighteenpence, you may take your fill and your choice
of a whole catalogue of finny delicacies; and there hangs the catalogue at the
door, in the shape of the bill of fare, with the princely turbot at the top.
And, by the same token, the genteel flavour of the aldermanic fish, mingled with
odours fragrant and appetising, of melted butter and ketchup and Hervey sauce,
greets our olfactories as we linger on the threshold; and we hear the clatter of
knives and forks, the clink of glasses, the explosion of corks, and the subdued
hum of voices in the room above; and we feel that the critical moment has
arrived, and that the deed which is irrevocable is being done.
"May good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both." Here we are in
Billingsgate Market—Billingsgate in midday—Billingsgate without so much as a
single fin, a fish-fag, or a bnmmaree. All are fled; the stall-boards are bare
and deserted; the flag-paved floor is swimming in water, and men in wooden clogs
are swilling and sweeping it clean: the ornamental fountain runs a dark-brown
mixture, and buckets are leaping in and out to supply the cleansing fluid. Down
in the regions below the dealers are overhauling the whelks, muscles, and other
shellfish, shovelling and measuring them into baskets and hampers, and packing
them for consignment to distant quarters. A solitary mountain of shrimps is all
that makes head against Thames Street.
Off the river front of the market, from fifteen to twenty fishing-smacks
lie moored close to the stairs; but they have discharged their cargoes long ago,
and dance buoyantly on the waves. The crews are lounging about lazily, hands in
pocket and pipe in mouth, watching the craft that sail or paddle past, and
exchanging impromptu criticisms and rough compliments with each other. Here and
there a fellowship porter is seen gossiping among them. You may know him by his
characteristic garb, cleansed though it be from the soil of the morning's
labour, and by his independent j air and bearing. You cannot see across the
river, for the mist and fog of the season have settled down upon the water, and
the vessels, as they loom past, have carefully to watch their way up and down
the channel. But there is life on the broad stream; you catch the cough, cough
of the engines, the dashing of paddles, the hoarse hail of the seaman, the
shrill cry of the engine-boy, and a hundred minor and mingled sounds, which,
accompanied by the low talk of the restless billows, tell the tale of man's
ceaseless industry on this, the grandest of the highways of the world.
Opposite to the Thames Street front of Billingsgate stands a handsome
edifice, with a tower over a hundred feet in height. This is the Coal Exchange,
and, as the doors stand open, we may as well look ki. We ascend the stairs in
the body of the tower, and emerge upon a gallery, one of three which look out
upon a rotunda sixty feet in diameter. The floor below represents the dial of a
mariner's compass, the design being formed by a species of parquetagc, with
timber of different hues. In the centre are the city arms, the dagger-blade
being formed of a part of a mulberrytree, planted by Peter the Great when he was
working as a shipwright in the dockyard at Deptford. Around and near the walls
are arranged a row of high desks, furnished with writing materials, at which the
agents and speculators stand and transact their business. The gallery from which
we look down is ornamented with emblematical figures painted on the panels, and
with views of the different processes by which coal is won from the mine and
transferred to the consumer. All round the gallery are private chambers and
offices, tenanted by the agents of the great coal-owners, and devoted to the
transaction of their business. Ascending to the second gallery, and thence again
to the third, we find the same style of ornamentation and similar conveniences
for business. The roof is a glazed dome, crowned with a lantern, which rises
seventy feet high, and sheds a flood of light through the whole interior, almost
equal to that of the street without. The Coal Exchange was finished and opened
in the year 1849, having cost over £90,000 in its erection. In excavating for
the foundation, there were discovered the remains of a Roman bath, in excellent
preservation. This relic has been preserved, and is open to the inspection of
the visitor. It is in the basement floor, on the east side.
Beyond Billingsgate, Thames Street shakes off its bustling character, and
presents nothing especially remarkable, at least in that peculiar phase of
London life which we have been contemplating. Furthermore, at this distance from
the dry arches we can hardly be said to be under the bridge. The present sketch
may therefore end here.
Leisure Hour, 1858